BY  PATH  AND 
TRAIL 


OSWALD  CRAWFORD 


FROM  THE  PRESS  OF 

THE  ''INTERMOUNTAIN  CATHOLIC" 

1908 


COPYRIGHT,  1908 
BY 

INTERMOUNTAIN  CATHOLIC  PRESS  COMPANY 


Bancroft  Library 


TO 
MY  FRIEND 

FREDERICK  WHITE  SCOFIELD,  ESQUIRE 

IN  REMEMBRANCE  OF  PLEASANT  DAYS  SPENT  IN   CHIAPAS, 

MEXICO,   AND  YUCATAN 

I  DEDICATE  THIS  RECORD  OF  MY  TRAVELS 
"BY  PATH   AND  TRAIL" 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  I. 

PAGE 

ORIGIN  OF  THE  FIGHTING  YAQUIS. . . ' 6 

CHAPTER  II. 
ON  THE  WAY  TO  THE  BARRANCA 13 

CHAPTER  HI. 
BATTLE  OF  THE  ELEMENTS 25 

CHAPTER  IV. 
VALLEY  OF  THE  CHURCHES 33 

CHAPTER  V. 
FRIEND  OF  THE  MOUNTAINEER 39 

CHAPTER  VI. 
THE  RUNNERS  OF  THE  SIERRA 45 

CHAPTER  VII. 
THE  PRIEST  AND  THE  YAQUIS. 57 

CHAPTER  VI7L 

WHERE  MAN  ENTERS  AT  HIS  PERU 67 

vii 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  IX. 
THE  DEAD  OF  THE  DESERT. 79 

CHAPTER  X. 
THE  FIGHT  FOR  LIFE 85 

CHAPTER  XL 

THE    "DIGGER    INDIANS" 91 

CHAPTER  XII. 
JESUITS  AND  DIGGER  INDIANS 103 

CHAPTER  XIII. 
THE  VAOA  DE  LUMBRE 109 

CHAPTER  XIV. 
THE  PRADERA  AND  GUANO  BEDS 121 

CHAPTER  XV. 
ORIGIN  OF  THE  "PIOUS  FUND" 127 

CHAPTER  XVI. 
THE  REiPOSE  OF  THE  GRAVE 135 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

SOLDIERS  OF  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT 141 

viii 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 
A  LAND  OP  SCENIC  WONDERS 153 

CHAPTER   XIX. 
VEGETATION  OF  THE  DESERT 161 

CHAPTER    XX. 
TEMPLES  OF  THE  DESERT 169 

CHAPTER    XXL 
A   MIRACLE   OF   NATURE 181 

CHAPTER    XX I L 
THE  PRE-HISTORIO  RUIN 189 

CHAPTER    XXIII. 
A  CITY   IN  THE  DESERT 197 

CHAPTER    XXIV. 

• 

CAMP  OF  THE  CONSUMPTIVES 205 

CHAPTER   XXV. 
THE   OSTRICH    FARM..  ..213 


ix 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


FACING  PAGE 


YAQUI  FIGHTERS  OF  THE  BACATETE  MOUNTAINS 5 


TABAHUMABI  INDIANS,  NOBTHEBN  MEXICO 49 


HALF-BLOOD  COWBOYS,  LOWEB  CALIFOBNIA 91 


A  "DIGGER  INDIAN,"  LOWER  CALIFOBNIA 


MOQUI  LOVERS,  CLIFF  PEOPLE 156 


PAPAGO  "WIKIUP"   '. . .  170 


RUINS,  ANCIENT  AND  MODEBN. . .  191 


"WHITE  EAGLE"  AND  "THE  PUMA"  APACHES  ON  PABADE 202 


xi 


BOOK  I. 


IN  THE  LAND  OF  THE  YAQUI 


A  SHORT  TALK  WITH  THE  READER 

The  romance  and  weird  fascination  which  belong  to 
immense  solitudes  and  untenanted  wilds  are  fading  away 
and,  in  a  few  years,  will  be  as  if  they  were  not.  The  in 
tangible  and  the  immaterial  leave  no  memories  after 
them. 

The  march  of  civilization  is  a  benediction  for  the  fu 
ture,  but  it  is  also  a  devastation  before  which  savage  na 
ture  and  savage  man  must  go  down.  Unable  or  unwilling 
to  adapt  himself  to  new  conditions  and  to  the  demands 
of  a  life  foreign  to  his  nature  and  his  experience  original 
man  of  North  America  is  doomed,  like  the  wild  beast  he 
hunted,  to  extinction. 

For  centuries  he  stubbornly  contested  the  white  man's 
right  to  invade  and  seize  upon  his  hunting  grounds;  he 
was  no  coward  and  when  compelled,  at  last,  to  strike  a 
truce  with  his  enemy,  he  felt  that  Fate  was  against  him, 
yielded  to  the  inevitable  and — all  was  over.  In  the  Baca- 
tete  mountains,  amid  the  terrifying  solitudes  of  the 
Sierras  of  Northern  Mexico,  the  Yaquis — last  of  the 
fighting  tribes — is  disappearing  in  a  lake  of  blood  and 
when  he  is  submerged  the  last  dread  war-whoop  will 
shriek  his  requiem.  It  will  never  again  be  heard  upon 
the  earth. 

The  lonely  regions  of  our  great  continent,  over  which 
there  brooded  for  unnumbered  ages  the  silence  which 
was  before  creation,  are  disappearing  with  the  vanishing 
Indian;  a  new  vegetable  and  a  new  animal  life  are  sup 
planting  the  old  now  on  the  road  to  obliteration.  The 
ruin  is  pathetic,  but  inevitable. 


Z  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

So  before  the  old  shall  have  entirely  vanished,  it  is  well 
that  we  should  look  upon  what  yet  remains  and  hand 
down  to  an  unprivileged  future  a  description  and  a  ver 
bal  photograph  of  what  the  country  was  in  days  gone 
by.  Lower  California,  Sonora  and  the  illimitable  pine 
forests  of  the  Chihuahua  Eange  of  the  Sierras  Madres 
yet  remain  in  their  primitive  isolation  and  magnificent 
savagery,  but,  before  our  century  expires,  the  immense 
solitudes,  the  unbroken  desolation  of  wilderness  and  the 
melancholy  fascination  which  belong  to  the  lonely  desert 
and  towering  mountain  and  to  sustained  and  unbroken 
silence  will  be  no  more.  Vale,  vale,  aeterne  vale — good- 
by,  good-by  for  evermore.  O.  C. 


CHAPTER  I. 

OKIGIN  OF  THE  FIGHTING  YAQUIS. 

The  "Gran  Barranca "  of  the  Urique  river  in  south 
eastern  Sonora  is  one  of  the  greatest  natural  wonders 
of  the  earth.  "And  where  is  Sonora! "  In  a  northern 
corner  of  the  territorially  great  republic  of  Mexico,  just 
south  of  the  line  separating  Arizona  from  Mexico  and 
washed  on  its  western  limits  by  the  waters  of  the  Gulf 
of  California,  is  the  state  of  Sonora.  Its  scenic  wonders, 
its  superb  climate,  its  mineral  and  agricultural  possibili 
ties  will  eventually  place  it  in  the  front  rank  with  the 
greatest  and  richest  states  of  the  Mexican  republic.  As 
yet  it  is  practically  an  unsettled  land  and  almost  un 
known  to  the  Mexicans  themselves.  It  awaits  develop 
ment,  but  promises  a  liberal  return  on  invested  capital. 
The  Cananea  copper  mines  are  now  attracting  wide 
spread  interest,  but  while  the  smeltings  of  these  mines 
and  the  mines  themselves  are  rich,  it  is  well  known  that 
many  other  prospected  and  as  yet  unopened  regions  con 
tain  superior  ore  of  inexhaustible  richness  and  abund 
ance.  Owing  to  the  almost  insurmountable  difficulty  of 
freighting  machinery  and  shipping  the  ore  these  mines 
cannot  now  be  operated  on  a  paying  basis.  Gold,  sil 
ver,  copper,  lead,  onyx,  marble,  hard  and  soft  coal  have 
been  found  and  are  known  to  exist  in  large  deposits,  con 
verting  Sonora  into  a  veritable  storehouse  of  nature.  The 
lowlands,  and  broad  valleys  of  the  state  yield  two  crops 
a  year,  and  these  semi-tropical  lands  grow  and  mature 
nearly  all  the  fruit  and  vegetable  varieties  of  the  tropical 
and  temperate  zones.  Like  the  Garden  of  Eden,  Sonora 


0  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

is  watered  by  five  beautiful  rivers,  and  when  irrigation 
is  more  generally  introduced  and  the  river  wealth  of  the 
land  utilized,  the  districts  of  Hermosillo,  Mayo,  Altar, 
Magdalena  and  above  all,  the  Sonora  Valley,  will  outrank 
in  luxuriant  vegetation,  productiveness  and  richness  of 
soil  many  of  the  marvelously  fertile  lands  of  Lower  Mex 
ico. 

Still,  the  development  of  all  these  mineral  and  agricul 
tural  resources  has  been  slow  and  is  yet  very  much  re 
tarded  by  a  combination  of  natural  and  hitherto  unsur- 
mountable  obstacles.  To  construct  durable  bridges  over 
the  chasms,  to  tunnel  giant  hills,  cut  beds  into  the  faces 
of  adamantine  mountains  and  build  railroads  into  the 
great  mining  districts  of  the  Sierra  Madre,  call  for  such 
a  prodigious  expenditure  of  money  that  the  state  and 
capitalists  hesitate  and  move  slowly. 

But  the  absence  of  modern  methods  of  transportation 
has  not  been  the  only  drawback  to  the  development  of 
Sonora,  nor,  indeed,  the  most  serious  one.  Amid  the 
lofty  mountains  and  rugged  hills  of  this  wild  region,  the 
last  of  the  fighting  tribes  of  the  American  Indians  has 
built  his  Torres  Vedras — the  fort  of  the  broken  heart 
and  desperate  hope — is  making  his  last  stand  and  fight 
ing  his  last  battle.  You  have  heard  of  the  Yaquis,  the 
war  hawks  of  the  wilderness,  the  mountain  lions  of  the 
Sierra  Madre,  the  tigers  of  the  rocks.  They  are  all 
these  in  their  desperate  courage,  in  their  fierceness,  in 
their  endurance  and  treachery,  in  their  cunning  and  de 
spair. 

In  this  desolation  of  wilderness,  behind  impregnable 
rocks,  these  fierce  men  have  fought  the  soldiers  of  Spain 
and  the  rangers  of  Mexico  to  a  "standstill."  These  are 
they  who  say  to  Mexico,  "Until  you  make  peace  with  us, 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  7 

until  you  grant  our  conditions,  until  you  settle  with,  us, 
no  Mexican,  no  American  will  work  the  mines  or  till  the 
soil  in  our  land." 

And  who  are  these  men  who  challenge  the  strength 
of  Mexico?  Who  and  what  are  the  Yaquis!  Before 
coming  to  Sonora  I  endeavored  to  inform  myself  on  the 
history  of  this  extraordinary 'tribe,  for,  like  the  Roman 
Terence,  whatever  is  human  interests  me — "homo 
sum,  kumani  nih.il  a  me  alienum  puto."  I  had  read  in 
the  American  and  Mexican  newspapers,  from  time  to 
time,  terrible  things  about  this  mountain  tribe.  I  read 
in  "El  Mundo,"  a  Mexican  paper  of,  the  date  of  Febru 
ary  28,  1907,  that  "a  Yaqui  Indian  who  had  just  emptied 
a  fifteen-pound  can  of  cyanide  of  potassium  into  the  mu 
nicipal  waterworks  reservoir  at  Hermosillo  was  caught 
in  the  act  and  shot  by  the  authorities.  A  new  terror  is 
added  to  the  situation  in  the  Sonora  country  since  the 
Yaquis  have  learned  the  deadly  nature  of  the  poison 
which  is  so  largely  used  in  mining  operations  and  is  so 
easily  accessible  to  desperadoes  like  the  Yaquis."  Late 
in  December,  1907,  I  read  in  another  paper  published  in 
Torin:  "A  marauding  band  of  Yaquis  entered  the  vil 
lage  of  Lencho,  killed  six  men  and  two  women  and 
wounded  four  other  Mexicans.  As  soon  as  the  firing  was 
heard  at  Torin,  three  miles  from  where  the  massacre  oc 
curred  and  where  2,000  troops  are  stationed,  General 
Lorenzo  Torres  took  the  field  in  pursuit  of  the  Yaquis. 
The  soldiers  will  remain  out  until  the  Indians  are  killed 
or  captured."  Killed  or  captured!  Well,  for  400  years 
of  knowrutime  the  Spanish  or  Mexican  troops  have,  with 
occasional  periods  of  truce,  been  killing  and  capturing 
this  solitary  tribe,  and  strange  to  relate  the  warriors  of 
the  tribe  will  not  stay  killed  or  captured.  On  June  12, 


8  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

1908,  a  Guaymas  morning  paper  published  this  dis 
patch:  "A  special  from  Hermosillo,  says  4,000  Mex 
ican  soldiers  under  the  personal  command  of  Gen. 
Lorenzo  Torres,  are  in  the  country  in  hot  pursuit  of  the 
Yaqui  Indians.  All  negotiations  looking  toward  the 
signing  of  the  peace  treaty  were  suddenly  broken  off 
this  afternoon.  The  Yaquis  insisted  on  retaining  their 
arms  and  ammunition,  after  having  acceded  to  every 
other  stipulation  of  the  Mexican  government.  The  Mexi 
can  officers  stood  steadfast,  and  the  Yaquis  withdrew 
from  the  conference.  Immediately  orders  were  dis 
patched  to  the  Mexican  troops  in  the  field  to  resume  hos 
tilities.  It  is  not  believed  that  the  campaign  will  last 
long  as  the  Mexican  troops  have  all  the  water  holes  in 
the  Yaqui  country  surrounded. " 

For  the  past  fifty  years,  on  and  off,  the  Mexican  sol 
diers  in  battalions,  companies  and  isolated  commands 
have  been  chasing  through  the  mountains  these  stubborn 
and  half-civilized  fighters.  In  the  few  last  years  the 
Yaquis  have  become  more  dangerous  and  daring,  more 
cunning  in  their  methods  of  attack,  and  as  they  are  now 
armed  with  modern  rifles  they  are  a  most  serious  menace 
to  the  progress  and  development  of  central  and  southern 
Sonora. 

Who,  then,  are  the  Yaquis  f  Back  in  the  days  when  the 
race,  known  to  us  as  the  American  Indian,  was  the  sole 
owner  of  the  two  great  continents  of  North  and  South 
America,  an  immense  region,  in  what  is  now  northwest 
ern  Canada,  was  possessed  by  a  great  nation  known  as 
the  Athasbascan,  from  which  the  territory  of  Athabasca 
and  the  great  river  flowing  through  it  take  their  names. 
One  division  of  this  numerous  nation  are  known  to-day 
as  Tinnes  or  Dinnes,  and  may  have  been  so  called  in 


BY  PATH  AND   TRAIL. 

those  early  days.  For  some  cause  unknown  to  us,  a 
tribal  family,  numbering  perhaps  a  thousand,  quarreled 
with  their  kinsmen  or  became  dissatisfied  with  their 
lands,  separated  from  their  brothers  and  went  in  quest 
of  new  hunting  grounds.  They  crossed  a  continent,  pass 
ing  in  peace  through  the  lands  of  other  tribes  and  cut 
ting  a  passage  for  themselves  through  hostile  nations. 
They  arrived  at  last,  it  may  be  in  a  hundred,  two  hun 
dred  years,  in  the  land  now  known  as  New  Mexico  and 
Arizona,  possessed  and  tilled  by  an  agricultural  and 
peaceable  people,  differing  in  customs,  manners,  super 
stitions,  and  in  origin  and  language.  They  decided  to 
settle  here.  The  Zuni,  Moki,  Yumas — call  them  what  we 
may — contested  the  right  of  the  Dinnes  to  live  in  their 
country.  The  invaders,  compared  to  the  established  na 
tions,  were  few  in  numbers,  but  they  were  trained  fight 
ers.  They  were  lanky  men  of  toughened  fibre  and  mus 
cle,  the  sons  of  warrior  sires  who  had  fought  their  way 
through  tribe,  clan  and  nation,  and  willed  to  their  sons 
and  grandsons  their  only  estate  and  property,  courage, 
endurance,  agility,  strategy  in  war  and  cunning  in  the 
fight.  The  DinnSs,  let  us  call  them  by  their  modern 
name  the  Apaches,  woefully  outclassed  in  numbers  by 
the  people  upon  whose  lands  they  had  intruded,  were 
wise.  Fighting  in  the  open,  if  they  lost  but  ten  men  in 
battle  and  the  Zuni  and  Moki  lost  forty,  in  the  end  the 
Zuni  and  Moki  must  win  out.  The  Apaches  took  to  the 
mountains.  The  Zuni  had  no  stomach  for  mountain 
fighting.  The  Apaches  raided  their  villages,  attacked 
like  lions  and  disappeared  like  birds.  They  swept  the 
Salt  River  valley  clean  and  where  at  one  time  there  was 
a  sedentary  population  of  50,000  or  60,000  there  was  now 
a  desert.  Those  of  the  original  owners  who  escaped  fled 


10  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

to  the  recesses  and  dark  places  of  the  Grand  canyon  or 
to  the  inaccessible  cliffs  where  the  Spaniards  found  them 
and  called  them  "burrow  people, "  and  where  hundreds 
of  years  afterward  the  Americans  discovered  them  and 
christened  them  "cliff  dwellers." 

There  are  no  records  on  stone  or  paper  to  tell  us 
when  these  things  happened;  there  is  no  tradition  to  in 
form  us  when  the  .DinnSs  entered  the  land  or  when  the 
devastation  began.  We  only  know  that  when  the  Span 
iards  came  into  Arizona  in  1539,  the  "Casa  Grande," 
the  great  house  of  the  last  of  the  early  dwellers,  was  a 
venerable  ruin. 

The  Apaches  now  increased  and  multiplied,  they 
spread  out  and  divided  into  tribes.  One  division  trav 
eled  south  and  settled  along  the  slopes  of  the  Bacatete 
mountains  and  in  the  valley  of  a  river  to  which  they  gave 
their  name.  When  this  settlement  took  place  we  do  not 
know,  we  only  know  that  when  Father  Marcos  de  Nizza 
entered  Sonora,  the  first  of  white  men,  in  1539,  this  tribe 
of  the  Apaches  called  themselves  Yaqui,  and  possessed 
the  land.  So  now  you  can  understand  why  the  Spaniards 
found  the  Yaqui s  tough  customers  to  deal  with  and  why 
the  Mexicans  after  sixty  years  of  intermittent  war  have 
not  yet  conquered  them.  The  Yaqui  claims  descent  from 
the  wolf,  and  he  has  all  the  qualities  and  characteristics 
of  the  wolf  to  make  good  his  claim. 

Centuries  of  training  in  starvation,  of  exposure  to 
burning  heat,  to  thirst,  to  mountain  storms  and  to  suffer 
ing  have  produced  a  man  almost  as  hardy  as  a  cactus,  as 
fertile  in  defense,  as  swift  of  foot  and  as  distinctly  a 
type  of  the  wilderness  and  the  desert  as  his  brother,  the 
coyote. 

From  the  earliest  Spanish  records  we  learn  that  this 


BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL.  11 

fierce  tribe  resisted  the  intrusion  and  settlement  in  their 
country  of  any  foreign  race.  One  of  the  conditions  of  a 
treaty  made  with  them  by  the  early  Spaniards  permitted 
the  exploitation  of  the  mineral  wealth  of  the  country. 
Villages  were  built  and  camps  established  from  time  to 
time,  but  when  the  Yaquis  or  Mexicans  broke  the  peace, 
these  camps  and  towns  were  left  desolate. 

It  is  impossible,  for  one  who  has  not  seen  Sonora  to 
imagine  the  ravages  wrought  in  a  country  for  which  na 
ture  has  done  so  much. 

The  name  "  Infelix '  '•  —unhappy — given  to  it  by  the 
early  missionary  fathers,  in  sympathy  with  its  misfor 
tunes,  was  portentous  of  its  miseries.  The  ravages 
of  the  Yaquis  were  everywhere  visible  a  few  years  ago, 
and  in  many  places,  even  to-day,  the  marks  of  their  ven 
geance  tell  of  their  ferocity.  By  small  parties  and  by 
secret  passes  of  the  mountains  they  sweep  down  upon, 
surprise  and  attack  the  lonely  traveler  or  train  of  trav 
elers  or  a  village,  slaughter  the  men  and  carry  off  the 
women  and  children.  Then,  in  their  mountain  lairs  and 
in  the  security  of  isolation,  the  mothers  are  separated 
from  their  children  and  the  children  incorporated  into 
the  tribe,  and  in  time  become  Yaqui  mothers  and  Yaqui 
warriors.  This  is  the  secret  of  the  vitality  and  perpe 
tuity  of  the  Yaqui  tribe.  If  it  were  not  for  this  practice 
of  stealing  children  and  incorporating  them  into  the 
tribal  body,  the  Yaquis  would  long  ago  have  been  anni 
hilated.  Marcial,  Benevidea,  Bandalares,  prominent 
Yaqui  chiefs,  were  child  captives  and  many  of  their 
council  and  war  chiefs  are  half-breeds.  And  now  here  is 
an  extraordinary,  and,  perhaps,  an  unprecedented  fact  in 
the  history  of  the  human  race  outside  of  the  Ottoman 
empire.  Of  the  Indians  warring  against  a  civilized  and 


12  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

a  white  nation,  one-third  are  whites,  one-half  half-castes 
and  many  of  the  rest  carry  in  their  veins  white  blood. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  civilized  troops  who  now,  and  for 
the  past  fifty  years,  have  been  waging  war  on  the  Yaquis, 
following  them  to  their  haunts,  hunting  them  in  the  fast 
ness  of  their  mountain,  are  all  Indians  and  half-breeds. 


CHAPTER  II. 

ON  THE  WAY  TO  THE  BARRANCA. 

To  the  traveler  from  the  northern  and  eastern  regions 
of  America,  Mexico  is  and  always  will  be  a  land  of  en 
chantment.  Its  weird  and  romantic  history,  its  unfa 
miliar  and  gorgeously  flowering  vines,  its  thorny  and 
mysteriously  protected  plants  called  cacti,  its  strange 
tribes  of  unknown  origin,  its  towering  mountains,  vol 
canoes  and  abysses  of  horrent  depths  prepare  the  mind 
for  the  unexpected  and  for  any  surprise.  Still,  the  stag 
gering  tales  I  heard  here,  at  Guaymas,  of  the  wonders  of 
the  Gran  Barranca  and  the  matchless  scenery  of  the 
Sierra  Madre  gave  me  pause.  The  Sierras  Madres  are  a 
range  of  mountains  forming  the  backbone  of  Mexico, 
from  which  all  the  other  ridges  of  this  great  country 
stretch  away,  and  to  which  all  isolated  spurs  and  solitary 
mountains  are  related.  This  stupendous  range  of  moun 
tains  probably  rose  from  the  universal  deep,  like  the 
Laurentian  granites,  when  God  said  "let  there  be  light, 
and  light  was,"  and  will  remain  till  the  Mighty  Angel 
comes  down  from  heaven  and  "swears  by  Him  that  liv- 
eth  forever,  that  time  shall  be  no  more." 

From  the  breasts  and  bosom  of  this  tremendous  range 
rise  mountains  of  individual  greatness,  towering  one 
above  the  other.  Here  are  sublime  peaks  of  imperishable 
material  that  lift  their  spires  into  ethereal  space,  and 
whose  snow  roofed  sides  receive  and  reflect  the  rays  of 
an  eternal  sun.  Here,  also,  are  horrent  gorges  which  ter 
rify  the  gaze — vast  abysses  where  there  is  no  day  and 
where  eternal  silence  reigns;  dead  volcanoes  whose  era- 


14  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

ters  are  a  desolation  of  emptiness  and  whose  sides  are 
ripped  and  gashed  down  to  the  very  foothills,  black  with 
lava  and  strewn  with  scoriae.  Of  the  time  when  these 
mighty  hills  belched  forth  flame  and  fire,  reverberated 
with  explosive  gases,  and  the  crash  of  the  elements  that 
rocked  the  earth  and  sent  down  scoriae  torrents  which 
devoured  life  and  overwhelmed  and  effaced  valleys  no 
tongue  may  speak.  Through  that  part  of  the  wonderful 
Sierra  dividing  the  states  of  Chihuahua  and  Sonora, 
flows,  through  depths  immeasurable  to  man,  the  Urique 
river,  whose  flow  when  in  flood  is  an  ungovernable  tor 
rent,  and  when  in  repose  is  a  fascination. 

Thousands  of  years  ago  the  streams  and  rivulets 
formed  by  the  thawing  of  the  mountain  snow  on  the 
Sierra 's  crests  and  slopes  zigzagged,  now  here,  now  there 
searching  a  path  to  the  sea.  On  their  seaward  race  they 
were  joined  by  innumerable  recruits,  springs  issuing 
from  the  crevassed  rocks,  brooks  stealing  away  from 
dark  recesses,  runlets,  rills  and  streamlets,  till  in  time 
the  confederate  waters  became  a  formidable  river  which 
conquered  opposition  and  fought  its  way  to  the  sea. 
This  is  the  Urique,  and  for  untold  ages  there  has  been  no 
"let  up"  to  its  merciless  and  tireless  onslaught  on  the 
porphyritic  and  sandstone  walls  that  in  the  dark  ages 
challenged  its  right  to  pass  on.  Through  these  formid 
able  barriers  it  has  ripped  a  right  of  way,  and  into  their 
breasts  of  adamant  it  has  cut  a  frightful  gash  of  varying 
width  and,  in  places,  more  than  a  mile  deep.  This  aw 
ful  wound  is  known  as  the  Gran  Barranca,  and  with  its 
weird  settings  amid  terrifying  solitudes  is,  perhaps,  the 
greatest  natural  wonder  in  America. 

I  have  visited  the  Grand  Canyon  of  Arizona,  and  am 
familiar  with  Niagara  Falls  and  its  wondrous  gorge,  but 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  15 

now,  that  I  have  returned  after  passing  eight  days  amid 
the  towering  peaks,  the  perpendicular  walls,  the  frightful 
abysses,  the  dark  and  gloomy  depths  of  precipitous  can 
yons,  and,  above  all,  the  immense  and  awful  silence  of 
the  Great  Barranca,  I  confess  I  feel  like  one  who  has 
come  out  of  an  opiate  sleep  and  doubts  he  is  yet  awake. 

From  the  quaint  and  tropical  town  of  Guaymas  on  the 
Gulf  of  California — still  called  by  the  Mexicans  the  Gulf 
of  Cortez — I  began  my  journey  for  the  Gran  Barranca. 
Accompanied  by  a  Mayo  guide  I  joined,  by  invitation, 
the  party  of  Don  Alonzo  Espinosa,  who,  with  his  son  and 
daughter,  was  leaving  to  visit  his  mine  in  the  La  Dura 
range.  With  us  went  four  rifle  bearing  Yaquis,  Chris 
tianized  members  of  the  fierce  mountain  tribe  that  has 
given  and  is  yet  giving  more  trouble  to  the  Mexican  gov 
ernment  than  all  the  Indians  of  the  republic. 

The  distance  from  Guaymas  to  the  Gran  Barranca 
is  about  200  miles,  and  it  is  idle  to  say  that  through  these 
rough  mountain  lands,  there  are  no  railroads,  no  stages, 
nor  indeed  facilities  for  travel  save  on  foot  or  mule 
back.  Noble  and  serviceable  as  the  horse  may  be,  no 
one  here  would  dream  of  trusting  his  life  to  him  on  the 
steep  and  narrow  trails  of  the  Sierras.  The  small  Mexi 
can  burro  or  donkey  is  as  wise  as  a  mountain  goat,  as 
sure  of  foot  as  a  Eocky  Mountain  sheep,  and  when  left 
to  himself  will,  day  or  night,  safely  carry  you  by  the 
rim  of  the  most  dangerous  precipice.  We  left  Guaymas 
at  4  a.  m.  At  Canoncito  we  met  a  train  of  loaded  burros 
driven  by  men  cloathed  in  zarapes,  white  cotton  pants 
and  sombreros,  and,  like  ourselves,  taking  advantage  of 
the  early  morning  and  its  refreshing  coolness.  Now  and 
then  we  passed  a  solitary  "jackal"  or  hut  from  whose 
door  yelling  curs  sallied  forth  to  dispute  our  right  of 


16  BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL. 

way.  We  were  now  entering  the  land  of  the  cactus,  that 
mysterious  plant  so  providentially  protected  against  the 
hunger  of  bird  or  beast.  Bristling  from  top  to  root  with 
innumerable  spines  of  the  size  and  hardness  of  a  cam 
bric  or  darning  needle,  the  Mexican  cactus  is  a  living 
manifestation  of  a  prescient,  omnipotent  and  divine  per 
sonality.  From  the  diminutive  singa,  which  grows  in 
waterless  regions,  and  whose  bark  when  chewed  gives  re 
lief  to  the  parched  tongue,  to  the  giant  Suhauro  towering 
to  the  height  of  forty  or  fifty  feet,  and  whose  pulp  holds 
gallons  of  water,  the  cactus  in  its  685  species  or  varieties 
is  a  marvel  of  diversity  and  a  fascinating  study  for  the 
botanist. 

At  10  o'clock  we  halted  for  breakfast  at  the  home  of 
Signor  Mathias  Duran,  an  old  and  hospitable  friend  of 
Don  Alonzo.  Here  I  noticed  with  pleasure  and  edifica 
tion  the  survival  of  an  old  Spanish  greeting  which  has 
outlived  the  vicissitudes  of  time  and  modern  innovations. 

Mr.  Duran  was  standing  on  his  veranda  shouting  a 
welcome  to  his  friend,  who,  dismounting,  shook  hands 
with  his  host  and  exclaimed:  "Deo  gratias"  (thanks  be 
to  God)  and  Duran,  still  holding  his  guest's  hand,  spoke 
back:  "Para  siempre  benidito  sea  Dios  y  la  siempre 
Virgin  Maria;  pase  adelante,  amigo  mio."  (Forever 
blessed  be  God  and  the  holy  Virgin  Mary;  come  in,  my 
friend.)  To  me,  coming  from  afar,  this  language  sound 
ed  as  an  echo  from  the  Ages  of  Faith,  and  I  marvelled  at 
the  colloquial  piety  and  childlike  simplicity  of  these  cul 
tured  and  valiant  gentlemen.  Late  that  afternoon  we 
entered  the  tribal  lands  of  the  Yaquis,  and  our  armed 
escort  now  became  somebodies  and  began  to  preen  them 
selves  on  their  courage  and  vigilance.  And  they  were  no 
ordinary  men,  these  civilized  Yaquis.  On  a  long  journey 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  17 

they  would  wear  down  any  four  men  of  the  Japhetic 
stock.  Of  sensitive  nostril,  sharp  ear  and  keen  eye,  noth 
ing  of  any  import  passed  unnoticed,  and  if  it  came  to 
a  brush  with  Mexican  "  hold-ups "  or  mountain  bandits 
these  Indian  guards  could  be  trusted  to  acquit  themselves 
as  brave  men. 

Half  of  the  fierce  and  one  time  numerous  Yaquis  were 
long  ago  converted  to  Christianity  by  Spanish  priests 
and  have  conformed  to  the  ways  of  civilized  man.  They 
work  in  the  mines,  cultivate  patches  of  ground  and  are 
employed  on  the  few  rancherias  and  around  the  hacien 
das  to  be  found  in  Sonora.  Others  are  in  the  service  of 
the  government,  holding  positions  as  mail  carriers  and 
express  runners.  In  places  almost  inaccessible  to  man, 
in  eeries  hidden  high  up  in  the  mountains,  in  cul-de-sacs 
of  the  canyons,  are  mining  camps  having  each  its  own 
little  postoffice.  The  office  may  be  only  a  cigar  box 
nailed  to  a  post,  or  soap  box  on  a  veranda,  but  once  a 
week,  or  it  may  be  only  once  a  month,  the  office  receives 
and  delivers  the  mail.  Night  or  day  the  Yaqui  mail  run 
ner  may  come,  empty  the  box,  drop  in  his  letters,  and, 
like  a  coyote,  is  off  again  for  the  next  camp,  perhaps 
thirty  miles  across  the  mountains.  Clad  only  in  bullhide 
sandals  and  breechclout,  the  Yaqui  mail  bearer  can  out 
run  and  distance  across  the  rough  mountain  trails  any 
horse  or  burro  that  was  ever  foaled.  Don  Alonzo  tells 
me — and  I  believe  him — that,  before  the  government 
opened  the  road  from  Chihuahua  to  El  Eosario,  a  dis 
tance  of  500  Spanish  miles  (450  of  ours)  a  Tarahumari 
Indian  carried  the  mail  regularly  in  six  days,  and  after 
resting  one  day,  returned  to  Chihuahua  in  the  same  time. 
The  path  led  over  mountains  from  4,000  to  6,000  feet 
high,  by  the  rim  of  deep  precipices,  across  bridgeless 


18  BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL. 

streams  and  rivers,  and  through  a  land  bristling  with 
cacti  and  thorny  yucca. 

Nor  will  this  extraordinary  feat  seem  incredible  to 
readers  familiar  with  Prescott's  History  of  Mexico.  It 
is  recorded  by  the  historian  that  two  days  after  the  land 
ing  of  the  Spaniards  on  the  eastern  coast  of  Mexico,  pic 
torial  drawings  of  the  strangers,  of  their  ships,  horses, 
mail  and  weapons  were  delivered  into  the  hands  of  Mon- 
tezuma  by  express  runners,  who  covered  the  distance 
from  Vera  Cruz  to  the  Aztec  capital — 263  miles — in 
thirty-six  hours.  In  that  time  they  ascended  from  the 
ocean  8,000  feet,  traversing  a  land  broken  with  depres 
sions  and  ravines  and  sown  with  innumerable  hills,  bar 
rancas  and  aroyos. 

As  we  advanced,  the  trail  grew  ever  steeper,  ever 
rougher,  ever  more  confused  by  the  inexplicable  wind 
ings  and  protruding  elbows  that  pushed  out  from  the 
granite  walls  as  if  to  challenge  our  advance.  How  the 
ancient,  angry  waters  must  have  roared  through  these 
narrow  passages  when  the  torrential  rains  were  abroad 
on  these  high  peaks,  and  the  swollen  streams,  leaping 
from  ledge  to  level,  swelled  the  rushing  flood!  Above 
our  heads  there  rose  three  thousand  feet  of  porphyritic 
rock,  but  we  had  no  consciousness  of  it,  no  foreboding  of 
danger,  no  fear,  no  chill. 

We  were  now  in  a  gorge  of  the  Bacatete  mountains, 
where,  a  year  ago,  the  Yaquis  ambushed  and  slaughtered 
the  Meza  party,  leaving  their  mangled  bodies  in  this 
narrow  gorge  between  Ortiz  and  La  Dura.  The  report 
of  the  massacre  was  brought  to  Ortiz  by  an  Indian  ex 
press  runner,  who  passed  through  the  defile  at  break  of 
day  and  identified  the  bodies.  Senor  Pedro  Meza,  a 
wealthy  mine  owner  and  one  of  the  most  prominent  men 


BY  PATH  AND   TRAIL.  19 

in  the  district,  accompanied  by  his  wife  and  daughters, 
Senoritas  Carmen,  Elvira,  Eloisa  and  Panchetta — six- 
Senoritas  Carmen,  Elvira,  Eloisa  and  Panchetta — sixteen, 
eighteen,  twenty  and  twenty-three  years — left  Guaymas 
early  one  morning  for  La  Dura.  At  Ortiz  they  halted  for 
refreshments,  where  they  were  joined  by  Senor  Theobold 
Hoff,  his  wife  and  son,  a  young  man  twenty-three  years 
old.  There  was  apparently  no  reason  for  alarm,  for  the 
Mexican  troops  and  the  Yaqui  warriors  were  fighting  it 
out  eighty  miles  to  the  east. 

When  the  Indians  ambushed  them,  the  men  of  the  party 
charged  desperately  up  the  slope  to  draw  the  Yaquis' 
fire,  shouting  to  the  ladies  to  drive  on  and  save  them 
selves.  The  women  refused  to  abandon  the  men,  and 
when  a  company  of  Mexican  Eurales  (mounted  police)  ar 
rived  on  the  scene,  Pedro  Meza,  his  family  and  guests 
were  numbered  with  the  dead. 

As  I  propose  in  another  place  to  give  a  brief  his 
tory  of  this  formidable  tribe,  I  confine  myself  here  to 
the  statement  that  the  Yaquis  are  now  and  have  been  for 
the  past  three  hundred  years,  the  boldest  and  fiercest 
warriors  within  the  limits  of  Mexico  and  Central  Amer 
ica. 

I  passed  the  night  under  the  friendly  roof  of  Don 
Alonzo,  and  early  the  next  morning  with  my  Mayo  guide 
and  companion  continued  iny  journey  to  the  Gran  Bar 
ranca.  Far  away  to  the  southeast  towered  the  volcanic 
mount,  the  Sierra  de  los  Ojitos,  whose  shaggy  flanks  and 
heaving  ridges  are  covered  with  giant  pines,  and  on 
whose  imperial  crest  the  clouds  love  to  rest  before  they 
open  and'distribute  impartially  their  waters  between  the 
Atlantic  and  the  Pacific,  through  the  Gulfs  of  Mexico 
and  California. 


20  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

The  trail  now  becomes  steeper  and  narrower,  carrying 
us  through  an  inspiring  panorama  of  isolated  mounts, 
huge  rocks  and  colossal  bowlders  standing  here  and  there 
in  battlemented  and  castellated  confusion.  Stretching 
away  to  the  south  and  extending  for  hundreds  of  miles, 
even  to  the  valley  of  Tierra  Blanca,  was  the  great  conife 
rous  or  pine  forest  of  the  Sierras  Madres,  the  reserves 
of  the  paleto  deer,  the  feeding  grounds  of  the  peccary  or 
wild  hog  and  the  haunts  of  the  mountain  bear  and  the 
jaguar  or  Mexican  spotted  tiger.  This  great  pine  range 
is  the  largest  virgin  forest  in  North  America,  and  for 
unnumbered  ages  has  reposed  and  still  reposes  in  its 
awful  isolation. 

In  the  early  Miocene  age,  when  God  was  preparing 
the  earth  for  the  coming  of  man,  this  immense  wilder 
ness  was  the  feeding  ground  of  mighty  animals  now  ex 
tinct  and,  at  a  later  period,  of  the  fierce  ancestors  of 
those  now  roaming  through  the  desolation  of  its  solitude. 
The  decay  of  forest  wealth  and  the  disintegration  of  its 
animal  life  eternally  going  on  have  superimposed  upon 
the  primitive  soil  a  loam  of  inexhaustible  richness.  Un 
fortunately  there  is  no  water  to  river  its  timber,  but 
when  the  time  comes,  as  come  it  will,  when  its  produce 
can  be  freighted,  this  forest  will  be  of  incalculable  com 
mercial  value  to  Mexico,  and  as  profitable  to  the  republic 
as  are  her  enormously  rich  mines. 

The  mountains,  isolated  cones  and  the  face  of  thev 
land,  as  we  proceeded,  began  to  assume  weird  and  fan 
tastic  shapes.  Wind  and  water  chiseling,  carving  and 
cutting  for  thousands  of  years,  have  produced  a  pano-- 
rama  of  architectural  deceptions  bewildering  to  man. 
These  soulless  sculptors  and  carvers,  following  a  myste 
rious  law  of  origin  and  movement,  have  evolved  from 


BY  PATH  AND   TRAIL.  21 

the  sandstone  hills  an  amazing  series  of  illusions  and 
have  cut  out  and  fashioned  monumental  designs  of  the 
most  curious  and  fantastic  forms.  Here  are  battlements, 
towers,  cathedrals,  buttresses  and  flying  buttresses. 
Away  to  our  left  are  giant  figures,  great  arches  and  ar 
chitraves,  and  among  heaps  of  debris  from  fallen  col 
umns  there  is  flourishing  the  wonderful  madrona  or 
strawberry  tree,  with  blood-red  bark,  bright  green  and 
yellow  leaves,  and  in  season,  covered  with  waxen  white 
blossoms,  impossible  of  imitation  on  wood  or  canvas. 

The  wild  turkeys  are  calling  from  cliff  to  cliff  and  the 
wilderness  is  yielding  food  to  them.  The  intense  silence 
weighs  upon  the  soul,  the  stupendous  hills  bear  to  the 
mind  a  sensation  of  awe  and  sublimity.  I  look  around 
me  and  see  everywhere  titanic  mountains  roughly  garbed 
in  hoary  vegetation;  the  vision  carrys  me  back  to  a  for 
mative  period  before  time  was,  "when  the  earth  was 
void  and  empty,  and  darkness  was  upon  the  face  of  the 
deep ;  and  the  Spirit  of  God  moved  upon  the  waters  and 
said  let  land  appear. ' ' 

And  now,  as  we  advance,  the  scenery  suddenly  becomes 
grander  and  more  sublime,  surpassing  great  in  its  awful 
solitude,  its  tremendous  strength  and  terrifying  size. 
The  spirit  of  man,  in  harmony  with  the  majesty  of  his 
surroundings  and  the  matchless  splendor  of  these  silent 
monuments  to  God's  creative  power,  ought  to  expand 
and  grow  large,  but  the  soul  is  dwarfed  and  dominated 
by  the  sense  of  its  own  littleness  in  the  presence  of  the 
infinite  creative  Mind  which  called  from  the  depths  and 
gave  form,  to  this  awful  materiality,  and,  down  through 
the  ages  there  comes  to  him  the  portentous  call  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  "Where  was  thou,  0  man,  when  I  laid  the 


22  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

foundations  of  these  hills,  when  the  morning  stars  sang 
together  and  all  the  sons  of  God  shouted  for  joy?" 

Late  in  the  afternoon  we  came  out  from  a  dense  forest 
of  lofty  pines  and  at  once  we  stood  upon  the  very  edge 
of  the  precipice  and  gazed  into  and  across  the  "Gran 
Barranca. "  My  position  was  on  a  broad  rock  platform 
overhanging  the  great  canyon,  and  from  it  I  looked  down 
a  sheer  three  thousand  feet  to  where  the  palms  and  pines 
meet  and  part  again.  Here  was  the  zone  of  separation, 
the  pine  moving  up  to  the  "tierra  fria,"  the  cold  land, 
and  the  palm  sloping  down  to  its  own  home,  the  ' '  lierra 
caliente,"  the  hot  land.  The  melancholy  murmur  of  the 
winds  ascending  from  the  sepulchre  of  the  silent  river, 
flowing  three  thousand  feet  below,  but  made  the  sense  of 
loneliness  more  oppressive.  From  the  table  of  the 
mountain  that  sloped  above  me  and  down  to  the 
waters  of  the  dark-red  river  below,  was  six  thousand 
feet  of  almost  perpendicular  depth.  Away  to  the  south 
was  the  Vale  of  the  Churches,  so-called  from  the  weird 
architectural  monuments  carved  and  left  standing  in  the 
wilderness  by  the  erratic  and  mysterious  action  of  the 
winds  intermittently  at  work  for  ages. 

From  where  I  was  standing  the  mining  camp  of  El 
Bosario  appeared  as  if  pitched  in  an  open  plain,  but  it 
is  really  on  a  promontory  between  two  "  barrancas "  or 
ravines,  and  beyond  it  the  land  is  broken  and  falls  away 
in  terraces  till  it  meets  the  purple  mountains  of  Sahuar- 
ipa.  Indeed,  the  little  village  on  this  tremendous  ridge  is 
surrounded  by  lofty  mountains.  Looking  down  and  be 
yond  where  the  graceful  palms  have  placed  themselves, 
just  where  an  artist  would  have  them  in  the  foreground 
of  his  picture,  the  view  is  a  revelation.  Far  away  is  the 
long  mountain  range,  gashed  with  ominous  wounds,  out 


BY  PATH  AND  TEAIL.  23 

of  which  in  season  streams  flow,  where  formidable  prom 
ontories  reach  out,  and  peaks  and  cones  of  extinct  craters 
tell  of  elemental  wars.  To  my  right,  stretching  away  for 
miles,  the  land  is  one  vast  tumultuous  mass  of  giant  bowl 
ders,  of  stubborn  cacti  and  volcanic  rocks.  Many  of  these 
erupted  rocks  still  carry  the  black  marks  of  the  fire  from 
which  they  escaped  in  times  geologically  near. 

How  many  thousands  of  years,  we  know  not  since 
these  porphyritic  hills  were  heaved  up  and  wasted  to  a 
dark  wine  purple  or  these  adamantine  ledges  burned  to 
a  terra  cotta  orange.  Here,  scattered  along  or  cropping, 
out  of  the  faces  of  the  towering  cliffs,  are  metamorphic 
rocks  and  conglomerates — slates,  shales,  syenites  and 
grit  stones — and  here  and  there  dust  of  copper,  brim 
stone  and  silver  blown  against  the  granite  walls  and 
blackened  as  if  oxidized  by  fire.  The  porphyritic  hills 
bear  ugly  marks  upon  their  sides,  cicatriced  wounds  re 
ceived  in  the  days  when  ' '  the  deep  called  to  the  deep  and 
the  earth  opened  at  the  voice  of  the  floodgates. " 


CHAPTEE  III. 

BATTLE   OF  THE  ELEMENTS. 

The  Gran  Barranca  or  Grand  Canyon  of  Sonora  is 
without  contradiction  one  of  the  great  natural  wonders 
of  the  earth.  It  is  not  known  to  the  outside  world;  it 
has  no  place  in  the  guide  books  or  in  the  geographies  of 
Mexico,  and  is  seldom  visited  by  men  possessed  of  a 
sense  of  admiration  for  the  sublime  or  appreciation  for 
the  wonderful  works  of  God.  The  Arctic  explorer,  Lieu 
tenant  G.  A.  Schwa tka,  in  his  ' '  Cave  and  Cliff  Dwellers, ' ' 
devotes  a  chapter  to  the  awesome  region,  and,  so  far  as 
I  know,  is  the  only  writer  who  has  ever  visited  and  re 
corded  in  English  his  impressions  of  the  great  canyon 
and  its  stupendous  setting. 

Nor  is  this  absence  of  information  to  be  considered 
something  surprising.  Sixty  years  ago  the  Grand  Can 
yon  of  Arizona  was  practically  unknown  to  Europe  and 
indeed  to  the  United  States.  Few  ever  heard  of  the 
stupendous  gorge,  and  of  these  few  there  were  those  who 
deemed  the  reports  of  its  wonders  greatly,  exaggerated. 
Indeed,  Arizona  itself  half  a  century  ago  was  an  unex 
plored  and  unknown  land  to  the  great  mass  of  the  Ameri 
can  people.  Even  to-day  there  are  regions  of  the  im 
mense  territory  as  savage  and  unknown  as  they  were  one 
hundred  years  ago.  Back  of  the  mining  camps  in  the 
gulf  districts  and  the  river  lands  under  cultivation,  So 
nora  to-day  is  an  unsurveyed  and  indeed  an  unexplored 
land.  The  fighting  Yaquis  are  yet  in  possession  of  vast 
regions  of  Sonora,  and  until  they  surrender  or  are  con- 


26  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

quered  by  the  Mexicans  there  will  be  no  civilization  for 
the  state. 

Tf  we  accept  the  Grand  Canyon  of  Arizona  as  it  was 
fifty  years  ago,  there  is  not  upon  the  earth  any  forma 
tion  like  that  of  the  Gran  Barranca.  The  railroad,  the 
modern  hotel  and  the  endless  procession  of  mere  and 
very  often  vulgar  sightseers,  have  commonized  the  Grafid 
Canyon  and  its  wonderful  surroundings.  The  curio 
shops,  the  hawkers  of  sham  aboriginal  "finds,"  the  ob 
trusive  guides,  the  inquisitive  tourist,  have  vulgarized  the 
approaches  to  the  Arizona  wonder,  and  robbed  it  of  its 
preternatural  solitude,  its  awful  isolation  and  weird  ro 
mance.  Again  the  exaggerated  and  distorted  descrip 
tions  of  railroad  folders,  of  correspondents  and  of  maga 
zine  writers,  have  created  in  the  public  mind  perverted 
and  unreasonable  expectations  impossible  of  realization. 
Take  away  from  any  of  the  great  natural  wonders  of 
the  earth  the  dowers  and  gifts  of  the  Creator,  the  haze 
of  sustained  silence,  the  immense  solitude,  the  entire 
separation  from  human  homes  and  human  lives,  the  sav 
age  wealth  of  forest  growth  and  forest  decay — dissolve 
these  and,  for  all  time,  you  mar  their  glory  and  matchless 
fascination.  .  This  is  what  the  greed  of  man  and  his  lust 
for  gold  have  done  for  the  Garden  of  the  Gods,  for  the 
Grand  Canyon  and  Niagara  Falls.  But  what  avail  our 
regrets  and  protests?  Kismet,  it  is  fate;  we  must  sur 
render  to  the  inevitable,  ' '  and  to  lament  the  consequence 
is  vain." 

Here  among  these  untenanted  wilds,  surrounded  by 
igneous  and  plutonic  hills  of  immeasurable  age,  the 
Gran  Barranca  of  the  Urique  reposes  in  all  its  savage 
magnificence  and  all  its  primeval  solitude.  Never  had  I 
seen  a  panorama  of  such  primitive  loveliness  and  of 


BY  PATH  AND   TKAIL.  27 

such  wild  and  imposing  appearance.  The  absence  of  all 
sound  was  startling,  and  the  sense  of  isolation  oppres 
sive.  Tennyson's  lines  in  his  "Dream  of  Fair  Women, " 
visited  me : 

<  <  There  was  no  motion  in  the  dumb,  dead  air, 
Nor  any  song  of  bird  or  sound  of  rill. 
Gross  darkness  of  the  inner  sepulchre 
Was  not  so  deadly  still." 

In  heaven  or  on  earth  there  was  not  a  sound  to  break 
the  uncanny  stillness,  save  alone  the  solitary  call  of 
some  vagrant  bird  which  but  made  the  silence  more 
severe. 

Three  miles  to  westward  were  the  cones  of  the  Sierras 
thrown  up  and  distorted  by  refraction  into  airy,  fantas 
tic  shapes  which,  at  times,  altered  their  outlines  like  unto 
a  series  of  dissolving  views.  Above  them  all,  high  in  air; 
rose  the  Pico  de  Navajas,  now  veiled  in  a  drifting  cloud 
of  fleecy  whiteness,  but  soon  to  come  out  and  stand  clear 
cut  against  a  sapphire  sky.  Here  and  there  the  moun 
tains  were  cleft  apart  by  some  Titanic  force,  leaving 
deep,  narrow  gorges  and  wild  ravines,  where  sunlight 
never  enters  and  near  which  the  eye  is  lost  in  the  twilight 
of  a  soft  purple  haze.  With  a  field  glass  I  swept  the  ter 
rifying  solitude,  and  the  landscape,  expanded  by  the  lens, 
now  grew  colossal.  Around  me,  and  afar  off,  in  this  des 
olation  of  silence  and  loneliness,  stood  in  isolated  majes 
ty,  weird  architectural  figures,  as  if  phantoms  of  the 
imagination  had  materialized  into  stone.  Huge  irregu 
lar  shafts  and  bowlders  of  granite  and  gneissoid,  left 
standing  after  the  winds  and  rains  had  dissolved  the 
softer  sand  and  limestones,  assumed  familiar,  but  in 


28  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

this  untenanted  wilderness,  unexpected  examples  of  the 
builder's  art.  In  this  tumultuous  land,  lonely  and  forbid 
ding  rose  "  cloud  capped  towers  and  gorgeous  palaces, M 
vast  rotundas,  cathedral  spires  and  rocks  of  shapeless 
forms. 

Between  me  and  the  valley  which  bloomed  with  tropi 
cal  life  far  down  by  the  flowing  waters,  lay  a  lava  lake, 
where  tumbling  waves  of  fire  in  Miocene  times  were 
frozen  into  frigidity,  as  if  God  had  said,  "Here  let  the 
billows  stiffen  and  have  a  rest."  Over  this  desolate 
plain  of  black,  igneous  matter,  in  a  sky  of  opalescent 
clearness,  two  eagles,  playmates  of  the  mountain  storm, 
were  crossing  and  apparently  making  for  the  pine  lands 
of  Iquala,  whose  lofty  peak  is  suffused  with  roseate  blush 
long  before  the  mists  and  darkness  are  out  of  the  Val 
ley.  Sometime  in  the  palasozoic  age,  in  the  days  when 
God  said,  "Let  the  waves  that  are  under  the  heaven  be 
gathered  together  into  one  place  and  let  the  day  and 
land  appear,'7  these  great  mountains  were  heaved  up, 
invading  the  region  of  the  clouds.  And  the  clouds  re 
sented  the  intrusion,  and  at  once  began  an  attack  on  the 
adamantine  fortifications.  In  this  war  of  the  elements 
the  clouds  must  "win  out,"  for  before  the  morning 
of  eternity  the  clouds  will  have  pulverized  the  mountains 
into  dust.  These  wandering,  tempest-bearing  clouds, 
with  restless  energy,  are  ever  hurling  their  allied  forces 
of  wind  and  rain  against  the  fronts  and  flanks  of  their 
enemies  and,  with  marvelous  cunning,  are  gnawing  away 
their  porphyritic  strength,  cutting  deep  gashes  in  their 
sides,  separating  individual  bodies  and  fashioning  them 
into  towering  masses  of  isolated  and  architecturally  won 
derful  formations. 

The  torrential  rains  and  melting  snows  have  rushed 


BY  PATH  AND   TRAIL.  29 

down  the  rugged  slopes  and  opened  ghastly  wounds  in 
the  sides  of  the  mountains.  These  wounds  are  the  deep 
gulches,  the  dark  ravines  and  abysses  of  horrent  and 
gloomy  depths  where  sunlight  never  enters.  The  run 
lets,  streams  and  hurrying  waters  were  rushing  to  a  com 
mon  meeting  and  as  they  fled  they  left  scars  on  the  face 
of  their  enemy  and  the  clouds  were  avenged.  And  when 
these  fluid  auxiliaries  met  together  each  one  of  them  car 
ried  to  the  common  center  large  contributions  of  silt 
and  sand,  spoils  torn  from  the  foe.  The  mountains  rolled 
huge  rocks  upon  their  enemies,  poured  liquid,  fiery  tor 
rents  of  molten  masses  which  hardening  into  metallic 
shrouds  covered  the  land  and  obliterated  the  courses  and 
beds  of  the  streams.  But  raw  auxiliaries  and  recruits 
came  from  the  region  of  the  clouds,  opened  new  chan 
nels,  massed  their  strength,  and  together  cut  into  and 
through  the  great  mountains  a  frightful  gash  one  mile 
deep  and  many  miles  long.  Through  this  gash  flows  the 
Urique  river  as  blood  flows  from  a  gaping  wound,  and 
as  I  looked  down  and  into  the  dark  abyss,  I  thought  I 
saw  Kubla  Khan  gazing  into  the  gloomy  depths  of 
Anadu — 

Where  Alph,  the  sacred  river,  ran 
Through  caverns,  measureless  to  man, 
Down  to  the  silent  sea. 

Before,  above  and  around  me  was  a  panorama  of  un 
surpassed  sublimity,  a  tremendous  manifestation  of  the 
creative  will  of  God,  a  co-mingling  of  natural  wonders 
and  elemental  forces  proclaiming  to  man  the  omnipo 
tence  of  God  and  the  glory  of  the  Lord.  To  the  material 
mind  the  land  around  me  is  "desert  land,  a  place  of  hor 
ror  and  of  waste  wilderness,  which  cannot  be  sowed,  nor 


30  BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL. 

bringeth  forth  figs,  nor  vines,  nor  pomegranates, ' '  but  to 
the  man  of  meditation  and  of  faith  it  is  a  land  where  the 
majesty  of  omnipotence  is  enthroned  and  the  voice  of 
Creation  supreme. 

From  the  granite  spur,  on  which  I  stood,  I  looked  upon 
and  into  the  Gran  Barranca,  the  great  canyon  of  the 
Urique,  into  and  over  as  grand  a  view  of  massive  crags, 
sculptured  rocks  and  devastation  of  fire  and  water  as 
ever  the  eye  of  man  gazed  upon.  Surrounded  by  shaggy 
mountains  of  towering  height,  by  plutonic  hills  of  im 
measurable  age  and  of  every  geological  epoch,  by  meta- 
morphic  formations,  weird  and  unfamiliar,  the  Gran  Bar 
ranca  reposes  in  majestic  isolation,  waiting  for  the 
highly  civilized  man  to  approach,  wonder  and  admire. 
The  savage  who  has  no  ideals,  has  no  sense  of  that  which 
answers  and  conforms  to  what  civilized  man  calls  the 
beautiful,  the  terrific  or  the  sublime,  and  for  him  the 
creations  of  God  have  no  elevating  influence  on  the  mind. 
The  sense  of  the  appreciation  of  the  sublime  and  the 
wonderful  in  nature  is  acquired  by  culture  and  depends 
on  complex  associations  of  mental  attributes.  High  taste 
for  the  beauties  of  harmony  and  the  grand  in  nature,  and 
a  sensitive  feeling  for  sound  or  form  or  color  do  not  be 
long  to  the  man  with  the  bow,  or,  indeed,  to  the  man  with 
the  hoe. 

The  Yaqui,  who  lives  surrounded  by  the  hills  on  which 
God  has  stamped  the  seal  of  His  omnipotence,  where  the 
departing  sun  floods  the  heavens  with  a  cataract  of  fiery 
vermilion,  crimson  and  burnished  gold  and  where  tEe 
sky  is  of  opalescent  splendor,  stares  unmoved,  for  he  has 
not  even  the  pictorial  sense,  and  so  this  marvelous  crea 
tion  of  God  and  work  of  the  elements  still  awaits  the  ap 
proach  of  admiration  and  of  praise. 


BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL.  31 

To  describe  the  stupendous  mountain  landscape  of  the 
Gran  Barranca  itself  transcends  the  possibilities  of  lan 
guage.  The  grandeur  of  the  panorama  and  the  massive- 
ness  overwhelm  you,  and  though  the  mind  expands  with 
the  genius  of  the  place,  yet  piecemeal  you  must  break  to 
separate  contemplation  the  might  and  majesty  of  the 
great  whole.  Only  by  so  doing  may  the  soul  absorb  the 
elemental  glory  of  the  matchless  scene. 


CHAPTEE  IV. 

VALLEY  OF  THE  CHURCHES. 

The  greatest  of  American  scenic  painters,  Thomas 
Moran,  roamed  for  three  months  through  the  Grand 
Canyon  of  Arizona,  making  sketches  of  the  strange  for 
mations,  catching,  as  best  he  could,  the  play  of  light  and 
shade  and  the  glory  of  the  sunsets  when  the  heavens 
were  bathed  in  chromatic  light.  He  went  home  and  fin 
ished  his  famous  painting,  "The  Grand  Canyon  of  the 
Colorado  Biver."  His  canvas  was  hung  in  the  capital 
at  Washington — the  highest  recognition  of  his  genius  his 
country  could  confer  upon  him — yet  Moran  proclaimed 
that  it  was  impossible  for  man  to  paint  the  splendor  of 
the  canyon  when  the  heavens,  at  times,  are  turned  to 
blood. 

I  have  already  mentioned  that  the  porphyritic  moun 
tains  still  bear  the  marks  of  elemental  wars,  of  gaping 
wounds  opened  in  the  Titanic  combats  of  past  days. 
These  are  the  deep  ravines,  the  narrow  fissures  and 
strange  openings  left  when  the  mountains  were  wedged 
asunder,  or  when  torrential  storms  broke  upon  the  great 
hills  and,  forming  into  rivers,  tore  their  way  to  the  low 
lands. 

In  those  remote  times,  gases  of  enormous  power  of 
expansion  were  imprisoned  in  the  wombs  of  these  moun 
tains,  then  air  and  water  entered,  the  gases  became  com- 
bustibile*  and  were  converted  into  actual  flames,  till  the 
rocks  melted  and  the  metals  changed  to  vapors  and  the 
vapors  liquefied  and,  expanding  in  their  fierce  wrath, 


34  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

burst  asunder  the  walls  of  their  mountain  prison  and 
fought  their  way  to  freedom.  Then,  amid  the  roar  of  es 
caping  steam,  the  gleam  of  lightning  and  the  crash  of 
thunder,  the  molten  mass  in  riotous  exultation  rushed 
down  the  body  of  the  monstrous  hill,  hissing  like  a  thing 
alive  and  flooding  the  land  with  fire  and  smoke.  Some 
awful  cataclysm  such  as  this  must  have  occurred  in  the 
time  and  in  the  land  of  the  patriarchs,  in  the  days  when 
Isaiah  spoke  to  God,  reminding  him  of  the  past,  "When 
thou  didst  terrible  things,  which  we  looked  not  for.  Thou 
earnest  down  and  the  mountains  flowed  down  at  thy  pres 
ence.  ' ' 

But  the  dominating  feature  of  the  terrifying  scene  was 
not  so  much  its  transcendent  majesty  and  isolation  as  its 
air  of  great  antiquity.  Turning  and  looking  up  I  saw 
a  vast  structure  of  adamant,  of  black  gnessoid,  shale  and 
shist,  traversed  by  dykes  of  granite  that  were  old  when 
the  waters  of  the  great  deep  submerged  the  domes  of  the 
highest  mountains.  Gazing  upon  these  mighty  hills, 
hoary  with  age,  I  asked  aloud  the  portentous  question 
of  Solomon :  "Is  there  anything  of  which  it  may  be  said, 
see,  this  is  new;  it  hath  already  been  of  old  time  which 
was  before  us  ? ' '  The  measuring  capacity  of  the  mind  is 
unequal  to  the  demands  of  such  magnitude,  for  there  is 
here  no  standard  adjustable  to  the  mind;  perspectives 
are  illusive,  distances  are  deceptive,  for  yonder  cliff 
changes  its  color,  shape  and  size  as  clouds  of  greater  or 
lesser  density  approach  it.  It  seems  near,  almost  unto 
touch,  yet  the  finger-stone  which  you  throw  toward  it 
falls  almost  at  your  feet,  for  the  cliff  is  full  two  miles 
beyond  you.  From  the  floor  of  the  canyon  to  the  sum 
mit  of  yonder  hill  is  twelve  times  the  height  of  the  tallest 
monument  in  America.  To  acquire  a  sense  of  intimacy 


BY  PATH  AND   TEAIL.  35 

with  this  Barranca,  a  mental  grasp  of  detail  and  a  per 
ception  of  its  immensity,  you  must  descend  the  sides  of 
the  granite  rock  which  walls  the  awful  depths.  To  the 
man  who  possesses  the  gift  of  appreciation  of  the  ter 
rific  in  nature,  the  prospect  is  a  scene  of  surpassing 
splendor.  The  panorama  is  never  the  same,  although 
you  think  you  have  examined  every  peak  and  escarp 
ment. 

As  the  angle  of  sunlight  changes  there  begins  a  ghostly 
procession  of  colossal  forms  from  the  further  side,  and 
the  trees  around  you  are  silhouetted  against  the  rocks, 
and  the  rocks  themselves  grow  in  bulk  and  stature. 

Down  toward  the  lowlands  I  saw  things,  as  if  alive, 
raise  themselves  on  the  foothills.  These  are  the  giant 
Suaharos,  the  Candelabrum  cacti  and  beside  them  was 
the  yucca,  a  bread  tree  of  the  south,  whose  cream  white 
flowers  shone  across  the  snakelike  shadows  of  the 
strange  cacti.  The  sepulchral  quiet  of  the  place,  the  con 
scientiousness  of  the  unnumbered  ages  past  since  time 
had  hoared  those  hills  and  the  absence  of  life  and  mo 
tion  filled  me  with  sensations  of  awe  and  reverence. 

When  darkness  shrouds  this  region  and  storms  of 
thunder  and  lightning  sweep  across  it,  penetrating  the 
cavernous  depths  of  the  great  gorge,  and  revealing  the 
desolation  and  frightful  solitude  of  the  land,  it  would 
be  a  fit  abode  for  the  demons  of  Dante  or  the  Djins  of 
the  southern  mountains  of  whom  the  woods  in  other 
days  told  terrible  tales.  No  man,  after  his  sensations 
of  awe  have  vanished  and  his  sense  of  the  sublime  in 
nature  is  satisfied,  may  continue  to  gaze  upon  the  scene 
around  him,  and  yet  admit  that  his  mind  has  done  jus 
tice  to  the  magnificence  and  glory  of  this  panorama  of 
one  of  the  supremest  of  earth 9s  wonders.  To  absorb  its 


36  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

splendor  the  mind  must  become  familiar  with  the  genius 
of  the  place,  recognize  the  influence  of  the  winds  and 
storms  on  the  sqfter  material,  perceive  the  variations  of 
colors,  forms  and  trees,  till,  expanding  with  the  spirit  of 
the  mountains,  the  soul  itself  has  grown  colossal  or 

Till,  growing  with  its  growth,  we  thus  dilate 
Our  spirits  to  the  size  of  that  we  contemplate. 

With  my  Mayo  guide  I  camped  that  night  on  the  gran 
ite  platform  high  up  on  the  Gran  Barranca.  We  saw 
the  sun  descend  behind  the  great  hills,  the  fleecy  clouds, 
suspended  and  stationary,  take  on  the  colors  of  the  solar 
spectrum,  the  stars  coming  out,  and  then — at  one  stride 
came  the  night.  Early  next  morning  we  began  the  de 
scent  to  the  Valley  of  the  Churches.  The  path  was  nar 
row  and  steep,  around  rocks  honeycombed  with  water 
or  eaten  into  by  zoophytes.  It  twisted  here  and  there, 
through  precipitous  defiles,  where  the  jagged  spurs  and 
salient  angles  of  the  huge  cliffs  shoved  it  dangerously 
near  the  rim  of  the  precipice.  We  continued  to  descend, 
our  path  winding  around  rocky  projections,  across 
arroyos  formed  by  running  water  in  the  rainy  season, 
skirting  the  danger  line  of  the  abysses,  till  early  in  the 
afternoon  when  we  entered  the  mesa  or  table  land,  where, 
in  a  huge  basin  reposes  "La  Arroyo  de  las  Iglesias" — 
the  vale  of  the  churches.  It  is  a  labyrinth  of  architectural 
forms,  endlessly  varied  in  design,  and  at  times  painted 
in  every  color  known  to  the  palette,  in  pure  transparent 
tones  of  marvelous  delicacy — a  shifting  diorama  of  col 
ors — advancing  into  crystalline  clearness  or  disappearing 
behind  slumberous  haze. 

The  foliage  had  assumed  the  brilliant  colors  of  sum- 


BY  PATH  AND  TBAIL.  37 

mer,  and  from  the  mesa,  midway  between  the  mountains 
and  the  valley  of  the  Urique,  the  season  was  marking,  on 
a  brilliant  chromatic  scale,  the  successive  zones  of  vege 
tation  as  they  rose  in  regular  gradations  from  the  tropic 
floor.  The  atmosphere  had  the  crystalline  transparency 
which  belongs  to  mountain  air,  and  through  it  the  scen 
ery  assumed  a  vividness  of  color  and  grandeur  of  out 
line  which  imparted  to  the  mind  a  sense  of  exaltation, 

"Till  the  dilating  soul,  enwrapt,  transfused 
Into  the  mighty  vision  passing  there 
As  in  her  natural  form,  swelled  vast  to  heaven. ' ' 

The  appearance  instantaneously  disclosed  was  that  of 
an  abandoned  city,  a  wilderness  of  ruined  buildings  left 
standing  in  an  endless  solitude.  It  was  a  phantom  city 
within  which  a  human  voice  was  never  heard,  where  coy 
otes  and  foxes  starved  and  where  scorpions,  tarantulas 
and  horned  toads  increased  and  multiplied. 

The  land  around  was  broken  into  terraces,  and  looked 
like  a  city  wrecked  by  the  Goths  and  long  ago  abandoned. 
For  here  was^  a  forest  of  cathedral  spires,  of  towers, 
great  arches  and  architraves,  battlements,  buttresses  and 
flying  buttresses,  dismantled  buildings  and  wondrous 
domes.  There  are  times,  as  the  sun  is  declining,  when 
these  domes  and  cathedral  towers  glow  with  sheen  of 
burnished  gold  or  repose  'neath  a  coloring  of  soft  pur 
ple  or  a  mantle  of  fiery  vermilion. 

And  how  did  these  weird  and  ghostly  monuments 
originate^  who  raised  them  in  this  wilderness  and  when 
were  their  foundations  laid? 

Here  is  the  story  as  it  was  told  to  me.  When  a  mass 
or  body  of  air  becomes  very  warm  from  the  direct  rays 


38  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

of  a  blazing  sun  or  by  contact  with  the  hot  sand  of  a 
great  plain,  it  looses  moisture  and  rapidly  ascends  to 
higher  regions  in  the  heavens ;  then  other  and  much  cold 
er  air  from  the  sea  or.  surrounding  land  rushes  in  to  fill 
the  void,  and  as  this  new  atmospheric  sea  rolls  its  great 
waves  into  the  stupendous  space  partially  left  vacant 
by  the  disappearing  hot  air,  sand  and  grit  are  taken  up 
and,  with  violent  force  and  velocity,  carried  against  a 
projecting  cliff  of  soft  material,  separating  it  from  the 
parent  body;  or  again,  a  great  sandstone  hill  may  stand 
solitary  and  alone  in  melancholy  isolation  surrounded  by 
hills  of  lesser  height  and  magnitude.  Then,  year  after 
year  and  century  after  century,  these  sand  blasts  cut  a 
little  here  and  a  little  there,  till  in  time  these  spectral 
forms  stand  alone,  and  from  afar,  resemble  in  their  deso 
lation  the  ruins  of  a  long-deserted  city. 

This  vast  amphitheater,  with  its  great  forest  of  monu 
ments  and  weird  structures,  surrounded  by  volcanic 
cones  and  walled  in  by  towering  monuments  is  a  part  of 
the  great  Barranca.  You  now  perceive  that  you  are  in 
a  region  of  many  canyons,  and  that  the  whole  face  of 
the  country  is  covered  with  wounds  and  welts,  and  with 
sharply  outlined  and  lofty  hills  of  gneiss  and  quartzite 
springing  from  the  floor  of  the  valley.  Beyond  contra 
diction,  earthquakes  and  volcanoes  at  one  time  shook  this 
place  with  violence.  Only  by  the  aid  of  an  airship  may 
the  Gran  Barranca  be  seen  in  its  majestic  entirety,  for 
much  of  it  lies  buried  in  the  vast  and  gloomy  abyss 
through  which  the  silent  river  flows  and  to  which  direct 
descent  is  impossible. 


CHAPTER  V. 

FRIEND  OF  THE  MOUNTAINEER. 

When  I  passed  out  of  the  Arroyo  of  the  Churches, 
it  was  well  on  in  the  afternoon  and  the  sun  beat  intensely 
hot  upon  the  steep  trail,  while  the  whole  atmosphere  was 
motionless  and  penetrated  with  heat.  No  man,  exper 
ienced  in  mountain  trails,  would  trust  his  life  down  these 
precipitous  windings  to  the  best  horse  that  ever  car 
ried  saddle.  The  long  suffering  " burro"  or  donkey, 
with  the  pace  of  a  snail  and  the  look  of  a  half  fool,  may 
be  a  butt  for  the  slings  and  arrows  of  outrageous  fortune 
in  animal  histories ;  he  may  be  ridiculed  and  despised  in 
cities  and  on  the  farm,  but  in  the  mountains,  amid  dan 
gerous  curves  and  fearful,  dipping  trails  the  donkey  ife 
king  of  all  domestic  animals. 

The  burro  is  not,  as  Sunday  school  books  picture  him, 
the  clown  and  puppet  of  domestic  beasts.  He  is  the  most 
imperturbable  philosopher  of  the  animal  kingdom,  the 
wisest  thing  in  his  own  sphere  in  existence,  and  the  best 
and  truest  friend  of  the  mountaineer.  He  is  a  stoic 
among  fatalists,  a  reliable  staff  in  emergencies  and  an 
anchor  of  hope  in  dangerous  places.  Like  the  champion 
of  the  prize  ring,  Joe  Gans,  or  the  sporting  editor's 
"king  of  the  diamond  turf,"  Cy  Young,  the  donkey 
"neither  drinks,  nor  smokes,  nor  chews  tobacco;"  in  a 
word,  he's  a  "brick." 

The  greatest  avalanche  that  ever  thundered  down  the 
sides  of  the  Matterhorn,  the  loudest  detonation  of  vol 
canic  Vesuvius,  the  roll  and  heave  and  twist  of  Peruvian 
earthquake;  any  one  of  these  or  all  of  them  "in  damna- 


40  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

ble  conspiracy"  could  not  turn  a  hair  on  the  hide  of  his 
serene  equanimity.  No  mountain  goat,  leaping  from  rock 
to  rock,  can  give  him  pointers.  He  is  contentment  and 
self-possession  personified;  he  will  eat  and  digest  what 
a  mule  dare  not  touch  and  will  thrive  where  a  horse  will 
starve.  Work?  I  have  seen  hills  of  fodder  moving  on 
the  highway  and  thought  with  Festus  that  too  much 
learning  had  made  me  mad,  till  on  closer  examination  I 
perceived,  fore  and  aft  of  these  hills,  enormous  ears  and 
scrawny,  wriggling  tails  and  under  the  hills  little  hoofs, 
the  size  of  ordinary  ink  bottles.  Down  the  dangerous 
mountain  trails  his  head  is  always  level,  his  feet  sure 
as  those  of  flies  and  his  judgment  unerring.  His  mus 
cles  and  nerves  are  of  steel,  his  blood  cool  as  quicksilver 
in  January,  and  his  hold  on  life  as  tenacious  as  that  of 
a  buffalo  cat.  But  more  than  all  this,  the  burro  is  one  of 
the  pioneers  and  openers  of  civilization  in  Mexico  and 
the  Southwest.  Patiently  and  without  protest  or  com 
plaint  he  has  carried  the  packs  of  the  explorers,  pros 
pectors,  surveyors  and  settlers  of  uninhabited  plateaus 
and  highlands.  With  his  endurance,  his  co-operation  and 
reliability,  it  became  possible  to  profitably  work  the  sil 
ver  mines  of  Mexico  land  the  copper  mines  of  Arizona. 
He  helped  to  build  railroads  over  the  Sierras  and  across 
the  plains  and  deserts  of  New  Mexico,  California  and 
Arizona.  He  brought  settlers  into  New  Mexico,  into 
Arizona  and  the  Pacific  lands,  and  with  settlers  came 
progress  and  development,  peace,  education  and  pros 
perity.  Therefore,  all  hail  to  the  burro!  In  grateful 
recognition  of  his  kindness  to  me  I  owe  him  this  commen 
datory  tribute.  He  has  done  more  for  civilization  in 
these  lands  than  many  a  senator  in  the  halls  of  the  capi- 
tol  or  LL.  D.  from  the  chair  of  Harvard. 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  41 

We  descended  to  the  land  of  "Las  Naranjos,"  of  the 
orange  orchards  and  banana  groves,  and  as  the  sun  was 
setting  entered  the  picturesque  and  ancient  town  of 
Urique.  Founded  the  year  Champlain  first  sailed  the 
St.  Lawrence  and  eight  years  before  the  Pilgrim  Fath 
ers  landed  on  Plymouth  rock.  Urique  has  never  known 
wagon,  cart,  carriage  or  bicycle.  Its  archaic  population 
of  3,000  souls,  mostly  Indians  and  Mexican  half-castes, 
has  few  wants  and  no  ambition  for  what  we  call  the 
higher  life.  If  the  wise  man  seeks  but  contentment, 
peace  and  happiness  in  this  world,  these  primitive  people 
are  wiser  in  their  generation  than  we.  I  must  confess 
that  among  the  civilized  and  half  civilized  races  of  Mex 
ico  I  found  a  cheerful  resignation  and  more  contentment 
than  I  expected.  Unprejudiced  study  of  their  social  and 
domestic  life  leads  me  to  believe  that  there  is  here  a 
much  more  equitable  distribution  of  what  we  call  happi 
ness  than  in  much  busier  and  more  brilliant  life  centers. 
The  fertility  of  the  arable  land,  the  continuously  warm 
climate,  the  abundance  of  wild  and  domestic  fruit  and 
the  simple  life  of  the  people  are  bars  to  poverty  and  its 
dangerous  associations.  It  would  be  well  for  many  of 
us  if  we  could  change  places  with  these  people,  drop  for 
a  time  the  life  of  rush  and  hurry  and  artificial  living  into 
which  we  of  the  North  have  drifted,  and  take  up  this 
dreamy,  placid  and  uneventful  existence.  We  deplore 
what  we  are  pleased  to  term  their  ignorance,  but  are  they 
not  happier  in  their  ignorance  than  we  in  our  wisdom, 
and  are  not  we  of  the  North,  at  last,  learning  by  expe 
rience  the  truth  of  what  Solomon  said  in  the  days  of 
old,  "For  in  much  learning  is  much  grief,  and  he  that 
increaseth  knowledge  increaseth  sorrow. " 

The  delightful  little  gardens  and  patches  of  vegeta- 


42  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

ble  land  stolen  from  the  mountain  present  a  dozen  con 
trasts  of  color  in  the  evergreen  foliage  of  the  tropical 
trees  and  vegetable  plants.  The  red  river  of  the  Urique, 
after  emerging  from  the  great  canyon,  flows  gently  and 
placidly  through  the  peaceful  village.  The  river  is  not 
truly  a  deep,  clay  red — not  the  red  of  shale  and  earth 
mixed — but  the  red  of  peroxide  of  iron  and  copper,  the 
sang-du-boeuf  of  Oriental  ceramics.  Eushing  over  ir 
regular  beds  of  gravel  and  boulders  and  by  rock-ribbed 
walls,  it  cuts  and  carries  with  it  through  hundreds  of 
miles  red  sands  of  shale,  granite  and  porphyry,  red  rust- 
ings  of  iron  and  grits  of  garnet  and  carnelian  agate. 

The  evening  of  the  next  day  after  entering  the  quaint 
and  picturesque  town,  I  stood  on  a  ledge  overlooking 
the  narrow  valley  and  again  saw  the  long,  snake-like 
shadows  of  the  Suaharos  creeping  slowly  up  the  side  of 
the  opposite  mountain.  The  air  was  preternaturally  still 
and  was  filled  with  the  reflected  glory  of  the  departing 
sun.  The  sky  to  the  east  was  like  a  lake  of  blood,  and 
under  it  the  ancient  mountains  were  colored  in  deep  pur 
ple  and  violet.  The  sun  was  an  enormous  ball  of  fire 
floating  in  the  descending  heavens  and  above  it  were 
banks  of  clouds  through  which  flashes  of  bloody  light 
came  and  at  times  hung  to  their  fringes.  Just  before 
the  sun  plunged  behind  its  own  horizon  its  light  pene 
trated  the  motionless  clouds  in  spires,  and  when  the  sun 
dipped  and  was  lost,  the  spires  of  glory  quivered  in  the 
heavens  and  waves  of  red  and  amber  light  rolled  over 
the  atmospheric  sea.  Sharply  outlined  to  my  right  was 
the  mountain  rising  above  the  Urique  like  a  crouching 
lion  and  holding  in  its  outstretched  and  open  paw  the 
unknown  and  attractive  little  village. 

It  is  only  nine  of  the  night,  but  all  lights  are  out  and 


BY  PATH  AND   TKAIL.  43 

the  village  sleeps.  My  window  is  open,  I  can  hear  the 
flow  of  the  Urique,  and  as  I  listen  to  its  gurgling  waters 
a  cock  crows  across  the  river.  The  crow  of  the  cock 
changes  my  thoughts  which  carry  me  back  three  years, 
and  bear  me  to  a  room  of  the  "seaside  cottage "  in  the 
negro  town  of  Plymouth,  Montserrat,West  India  Islands. 
Unable  to  sleep  I  am  seated  at  my  open  window  looking 
out  upon  the  tragic  waters  of  the  Caribbean  sea.  The 
moon  swings  three-quarters  full  in  a  cloudless  sky,  the 
air  I  breathe  brings  to  me  a  suspicion  of  sulphur  es 
caping  from  the  open  vents  of  La  Soufriere,  the  vol 
canic  mount  rising  to  the  west  and  dangerously  near  the 
negro  village.  I  can  hear  the  wash  of  the  waves  combing 
the  beach  and  see  the  "Jumbo  lights"  in  the  windows  of 
the  negro  cabins  to  remind  the  ghosts  of  the  dead  and 
the  demons  of  the  night  that  friends  are  sleeping  there. 
It  is  2  o  'clock  in  the  morning,  a  sepulchral  quiet  possesses 
the  uncanny  place,  when — the  cock  crows.  Then  from 
out  a  large  hut,  down  the  shore  street,  there  comes  a 
negro  well  on  in  years,  followed  by  a  young  negress,  two 
women  and  three  men.  They  do  not  speak,  nor  shake 
hands,  they  exchange  no  civilities,  they  separate  and  dis 
appear.  Who  were  they?  Snake  worshipers.  Great 
Britain  owns  the  island  and  British  law  prohibits,  under 
penalty,  the  adoration  of  the  serpent.  Stronger  than 
the  law  of  Great  Britain  is  the  law  of  African  supersti 
tion  and  the  fear  of  the  demon  that  dwells  in  the  white 
snake,  so  reverently  guarded  and  fed  by  the  family  who 
live  in  the  hut.  Again  the  cock  crows.  Where  am  I? 
Oh,  in  Urique.  There  is  no  noticeable  difference  in  the 
crow  of  the  cock  the  world  over.  This  friendly  bird 
from  over  the  Urique  river  warns  me  it  is  getting  late. 
I  must  to  bed,  so,  "Good  night  to  Marmion." 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  RUNNERS  OF  THE  SIERRA. 

If  there  be  any  state  in  the  Eepublic  of  Mexico  about 
which  it  is  difficult  to  obtain  accurate  or  exact  statistics, 
it  is  Sonora.  Populated  largely  by  Indians  and  miners, 
scattered  over  the  whole  state  and  immune  to  the  salu 
tary  influence  of  law,  it  is  difficult  to  take  its  census  or 
bring  its  population  under  the  restraining  checks  of  civ 
ilization.  Hermosillo,  with  its  25,000  people,  is  numeri 
cally  and  commercially  the  most  important  town  in  So 
nora.  It  is  110  miles  north  of  Guaymas.  The  harbor  of 
Guaymas  is  one  of  the  best  on  the  Pacific  coast,  it  is 
four  miles  long,  with  an  inner  and  outer  bay,  and  will 
admit  ships  of  the  heaviest  tonnage,  and  could,  I  think, 
float  the  commerce  of  America.  The  Yaqui  river,  of 
which  I  will  have  occasion  to  write  at  another  time,  en 
ters  the  Gulf  of  California,  called  the  Gulf  of  Cortez  by 
the  Mexicans — eighteen  miles  below  Guaymas.  The  So 
nora  flows  through  the  Arizipa  valley,  which  is  known  as 
the  Garden  of  Sonora  on  account  of  its  incomparable  fer 
tility.  Formerly  it  was  dominated  by  the  terrible  Ya- 
quis,  and  a  few  years  ago  the  depopulated  villages  and 
ranches  were  melancholy  reminders  of  the  ruthless  ven 
geance  of  these  ferocious  men. 

The  Sonora  river  valley,  with  its  wealth  of  rich  allu 
vial  land,  its  facilities  for  irrigation  and  adaptation  to 
semi-tropical  and  temperate  fruits  and  cereals,  will 
eventually  support  a  great  population. 

That  the  valley  and  adjacent  lands  were  in  ancient 
days  occupied  by  a  numerous  and  barbaric — not  savage — 


46  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

race,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  Scattered  over  the  face  of 
the  country  are  the  remains  of  a  people  who  have  long 
ago  disappeared.  Many  of  the  ruins  are  of  great  extent, 
covering  whole  table  lands,  and  are  crumbling  away  in 
groups  or  in  single  isolation.  Unfortunately,  no  docu 
ments  are  known  to  exist  to  record  the  traditions  of  the 
ancient  people  before  the  Spanish  missionary  fathers 
first  began  the  civilization  of  the  tribes  400  years  ago. 
'When  the  early  Jesuit  missionaries  were  called  home,  the 
archives  and  everything  belonging  to  the  missions  were 
carried  away  or  destroyed.  It  is,  however,  possible  that 
a  search  through  the  libraries  of  the  Jesuit  and  Francis 
can  monasteries  in  France  and  Spain  may  yet  reward 
the  historian  with  some  valuable  finds. 

From  an  examination  of  the  sites  and  the  ruins,  scat 
tered  here  and  there  in  the  Sonora  valley,  I  am  satisfied 
that  the  ancient  dwellers  were  a  sedentary  and  agricul 
tural  people ;  that  they  were  of  the  same  race  as  the  Moki 
and  suffered  the  same  fate  as  that  picturesque  tribe,  and 
from  the  unsparing  hand  of  the  same  merciless  destroy 
ers,  the  Apache- Yaquis.  Long  before  the  time  of  Cortez 
the  evil  fame  of  the  unconquerable  Yaquis  had  settled 
around  the  throne  of  the  Montezumas.  There  is  a  tra 
dition  that  after  the  Spanish  chief  had  stormed  the  City 
of  Mexico  and  made  a  prisoner  of  the  Aztec  ruler,  Mon- 
tezuma  said  to  him:  "You  may  take  possession  of  all 
my  empire  and  subdue  all  its  tribes — but,  the  Yaqui, 
never."  To-day  the  Sonora  valley  is  wet  with  the  blood 
of  slaughtered  settlers.  Formerly  these  fierce  men  con 
fined  their  depredations  to  the  Sonora  valley  and  the 
Yaqui  river  regions,  but  the  members  of  the  tribe  are 
now  scattered  over  northern  and  central  Sonora,  the 
fighters,  however,  live  in  the  Bacatete  mountains  and 


BY  PATH  AND   TRAIL.  47 

parts  of  the  Sierras.  One-half  of  them  are  partially  civ 
ilized  and  are  peaceable,  the  other  half  continue  to  wage 
a  guerrilla  war  in  the  mountainous  regions.  These  moun 
taineers  are  men  of  toughened  fibre,  of  great  endurance 
and  inured  to  the  extremes  of  heat,  cold,  and  hunger. 
They  have  no  fear  of  anything  or  anybody,  except  the 
spirits  of  evil,  which  bring  disease  and  calamities  upon 
them,  and  the  "shamans,"  or  medicine  men,  who  act 
as  infernal  mediators  between  these  demons  and  their 
victims. 

Their  wild,  isolated  and  independent  life  has  given  to 
the  Yaquis  all  those  characteristic  traits  of  perfect  self- 
reliance,  of  boldness  and  impatience  of  restraint  which 
distinguish  them  from  the  Mayos  and  other  sedentary 
tribes  of  northern  Mexico.  Born  in  the  mountains,  they 
are  familiar  with  the  woods  and  trails.  No  coyote  of  the 
rocks  knows  his  prowling  grounds  better  than  a  Yaqui 
the  secrets  of  the  Sierra  wilderness.  Like  the  eagle,  he 
sweeps  down  upon  his  prey  from  his  aerie  amid  the 
clouds,  and,  like  the  eagle,  disappears. 

His  dorsal  and  leg  muscles  are  withes  of  steel,  and 
with  his  dog — half  coyote,  half  Spanish  hound — he'll 
wear  down  a  mountain  deer.  With  the  possible  excep 
tion  of  his  neighbor  and  kinsman,  the  Tarahumari  of  the 
Chihuahua  woods,  he  is,  perhaps,  the  greatest  long  dis 
tance  runner  in  America. 

Occasionally,  friendly  contests  take  place  between  the 
noted  athletes  of  the  two  tribes.  Six  years  ago  a  Tara 
humari  champion  challenged  one  of  the  greatest  long 
distance  rjinners  of  the  Yaquis.  In  a  former  contest  the 
Yaqui  runner  won  out.  He  covered  100  Spanish  miles, 
equal  to  90  of  ours,  over  hilly  and  broken  ground,  in 
eleven  hours  and  twenty  minutes.  Comparing  this  per- 


48  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

formance  with  those  of  civilized  man  in  ancient  and  mod 
ern  times,  the  Yaqui,  all  things  considered,  wins  the  lau 
rel  crown.  Pliny  records  that  Anystrs,  of  Sparta,  and 
Philonedes,  the  herald  of  Alexander  the  Great,  divid 
ing  the  distance  between  them,  covered  160  miles  in 
twenty-four  hours.  Herodotus  tells  us  that  Phieddip- 
pides,  the  pan-Hellenic  champion,  traversed  135  miles 
over  very  rocky  territory,  and  in  gruelling  weather,  in 
less  than  two  days,  carried  to  Sparta  the  news  of  the 
advancing  Persians.  He  almost  attained  an  apotheosis 
in  reward  for  his  endurance;  showing  that,  even  among 
the  athletic  Greeks  the  feat  was  deemed  an  extraordi 
nary  performance.  History  also  credits  Areus  with  win 
ning  the  Dolichos,  of  two  and  a  half  miles,  in  a  fraction 
less  than  twelve  minutes,  at  the  Olympic  game,s,  and 
straightway  starting  on  a  homeward  run  of  sixty  miles, 
to  be  the  first  to  bear  the  joyous  news  to  his  native  vil 
lage.  In  recent  times,  Bowell,  of  England,  in  1882,  trav 
eled  150  miles  in  twenty-two  hours  and  thirty  minutes, 
and  Fitzgerald,  in  Madison  Square  Garden,  went,  in 
1886,  on  a  quarter-mile  circular  track,  ninety  miles  in 
twelve  hours.  Longboat,  the  Oneida  Indian  from  the 
Brantford  reservation,  Canada,  won  the  Boston  Mara 
thon,  twenty-six  miles,  in  two  hours  and  twenty-four 
minutes.  These  modern  feats,  however,  were  per 
formed  over  carefully  prepared  courses  and  ought  not 
to  take  rank  with  the  rough  mountain  and  desert  races 
of  the  Yaquis  and  Tarahumaris. 

The  race  of  six  years  ago  was  run  over  the  same 
course  as  the  former,  and  was  the  same  distance,  that  is, 
ninety  miles.  Piles  of  blankets,  bridles  and  saddles, 
bunches  of  cows,  sheep,  goats  and  burros  were  bet  on 
the  result,  and,  when  the  race  was  over,  the  Yaqui  braves 


— Copyright  by  Underwood  &  Underwood,  New  York. 

TARAHUMARI  INDIANS,  NORTHERN  MEXICO 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  49 

were  bankrupt.  The  night  before  the  event  the  Indians 
camped  near  the  starting  line,  and  when  the  sun  went 
down  opened  the  betting.  An  hour  before  the  start,  the 
course  was  lined  on  each  side  with  men  two  miles  apart. 
Precisely  at  4  in  the  morning  the  racers,  wearing  bull- 
hide  sandals  and  breech-clouts,  or,  to  be  more  accurate, 
the  G  string,  toed  the  mark  and  were  sent  away,  encour 
aged  by  the  most  extraordinary  series  of  hi-yi-yiis,  yells, 
shrieks  and  guttural  shouts  ever  heard  by  civilized  man. 
The  path  carried  them  over  rough  ground,  along  the 
verge  of  deep  precipices,  over  arroyos  or  old  river  beds, 
across  arid  sands.  Every  two  miles  the  runners  stopped 
for  a  quick  rub  down  and  mouth  wash  of  pinola  or  atole, 
a  corn  meal  gruel.  Then  with  a  "win  for  the  Yaquis"  or 
"the  Humari  women  already  welcome  you,"  whispered 
in  his  ear,  the  runner  bounds  into  the  wilderness.  Three 
o'clock  that  afternoon  the  men  were  sighted  from  the 
finish  line  running  shin  to  shin,  and  at  3 :15  the  Tarahu- 
mari  crossed  the  mark  amid  a  chorus  of  triumphal  yelps, 
retrieving  the  honors  lost  in  the  former  contest  and  mak 
ing  his  backers  "heap  rich."  The  ninety  miles  were 
run  by  both  men  in  eleven  hours  and  fifteen  minutes,  and 
considering  the  nature  of  the  ground,  it  is  doubtful  if 
any  of  our  great  athletes  could  cover  the  distance  in  the 
same  time. 

In  addition  to  his  fleetness  of  foot  and  staying  powers, 
the  Yaqui  is  a  man  of  infinite  resources.  Years  of  thirst, 
starvation  and  exposure  have  produced  a  human  type 
with  the  qualities  and  developed  instinct  of  the  coyote 
of  the  desert.  He  is  the  descendant  of  many  gener 
ations  of  warriors,  and  is  heir  to  all  the  acquired  infor 
mation  of  centuries  of  experience,  of  bush,  desert,  and 
mountain  fighting.  There  is  not  a  trick  of  strategy,  not 


50  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

a  bit  of  savage  tactics  in  war,  not  a  particle  of  knowledge 
bearing  upon  attack,  engagement  and  escape,  with  which 
he  is  not  familiar,  for  he  has  been  taught  them  all  from 
infancy,  and  has  practiced  them  from  boyhood.  He  is 
the  last  of  the  Indian  fighters,  and,  perhaps,  the  greatest. 
The  world  will  never  again  see  a  man  like  him,  for  the 
conditions  will  never  again  make  for  his  reproduction. 
With  him  will  disappear  the  perfection  of  savage  cun 
ning  in  war  and  on  the  hunt,  and  when  he  departs,  an 
unlamented  man,  but  withal  a  picturesque  character,  will 
disappear  from  the  drama  of  human  life,  will  go  down 
into  darkness,  but  not  into  oblivion. 

What,  then,  is  the  cause  of  the  murderous  and  pro 
longed  hostility  of  the  Yaquis  to  Mexican  rule?  Why  is 
the  exterminating  feud  allowed  to  perpetuate  itself,  and 
why  are  not  these  Indians  subdued?  Must  Sonora  be 
forever  terrorized  by  a  handful  of  half-savage  mountain 
eers,  and  must  the  march  of  civilization  in  Sonora  be  ar 
rested  by  a  tribe  of  Indians? 

To  get  an  answer  to  these  questions  I  asked,  and  ob 
tained  an  interview  with  General  Lorenzo  E.  Torres, 
commander-in-chief  of  the  First  Military  Zone  of  Mex 
ico.  With  my  request  I  inclosed  my  credentials  accredit 
ing  me  as  a  person  of  some  importance  in  his  own  coun 
try  and  a  writer  of  some  distinction. 

Although  the  general's  time  was  filled  with  important 
military  affairs  and  another  engagement  awaited  him,  he 
received  me  with  that  courtesy  and  politeness  which 
seem  to  be  an  inheritance  of  the  educated  members  of 
the  Latin  race  the  world  over.  Though  a  man  of  full 
60  years,  the  general  appears  to  retain  all  the  animation 
and  vitality  of  the  days  when,  by  his  impetuosity  and 
dauntless  courage,  he  won  his  brevet  at  Oajaca,  and  the 


BY  PATH  AND   TRAIL.  51 

tassels  of  a  colonel  on  the  field  of  Mien.  To  the  physical 
buoyancy  and  elasticity  of  younger  days  were  now  wed 
ded  the  conscious  dignity  of  high  reward  and  the  no 
bility  of  facial  expression  which  waits  on  honorable  age. 
After  an  exchange  of  introductory  courtesies,  I  made 
known  at  once  the  purport  of  my  visit. 

"General,  would  you  kindly  give  me  some  informa 
tion  about  the  Yaquis?  In  my  country  we  have  heard 
the  evidence  of  one  side  only,  and  that  was  not  always 
favorable  to  the  Mexican  government.  We  would  be 
pleased  to  know  the  truth,  so  as  to  be  able  to  form  a 
just  and  impartial  judgment."  The  general  very  oblig 
ingly  proceeded  to  satisfy  my  request. 

"The  feud  with  the  Yaquis,"  he  smilingly  replied, 
"goes  back  many  years.  The  trouble  began  in  the  days 
of  the  conquest  of  Mexico.  In  1539,  when  the  Spaniards 
first  crossed  the  Mayo  river,  and  penetrated  the  lands  of 
the  Yaquis,  they  found  them  entrenched  on  the  banks 
of  the  Yaqui  river,  awaiting  the  advance  of  the  Euro 
peans,  and  ready  for  battle.  Their  chief,  robed  in  the 
skin  of  a  spotted  tiger,  profusely  decorated  with  colored 
shells  and  the  feathers  of  the  trogon,  stepped  to  the  front 
of  his  warriors,  drew  a  line  upon  the  ground  and  defied 
the  Spaniards  to  cross  it.  The  Spanish  captain  protest 
ed  that  he  and  his  men  came  as  friends ;  they  were  simply 
exploring  the  country,  and  all  they  asked  for  or  wanted 
was  food  for  themselves  and  horses. 

"  'We  will  first  bind  your  men  and  then  we  will  feed 
your  horses/  was  the  answer  of  the  Yaqui  chieftain. 
While  he  was  yet  speaking  he  unwound  a  cougar  lariat, 
and  advanced  as  if  he  intended  to  rope  the  Castilian  of 
ficer.  This  was  the  signal  for  a  hot  engagement,  which 
ended  in  the  retreat  of  the  Spaniards.  Later,  in  1584, 


52  BY  PATH  AND  TBAIL. 

Don  Hartinez  de  Hurdiade  tried  to  conquer  them,  and 
was  defeated  in  three  separate  campaigns.  However, 
strange  to  relate,  in  1610,  the  Yaquis,  of  their  own  ac 
cord,  submitted  to  the  Crown  of  Spain. " 

"Are  they  braver  and  better  fighters,  general,  than 
the  other  tribes  now  at  peace  with  the  republic !"  "I 
think  they  are,"  replied  Don  Lorenzo.  "Mountaineers 
are  everywhere  stubborn  fighters.  At  any  rate,  for  the 
past  fifty  years  they  have  given  us  more  trouble  than 
all  the  Indians  in  Mexico  and  Yucatan.  Don  Diego  Mar 
tinez,  in  his  report,  made  mention  of  the  indomitable 
bravery  and  cunning  strategy  of  the  Yaquis  of  his  time. 
In  his  '  Eelacion, '  or  report  of  his  expedition,  he  said  that 
no  Indian  tribe  had  caused  him  so  much  trouble  as  the 
Yaqui.  After  their  submission,  in  1610,  they  stayed 
quiet  until  1740,  when  they  again  broke  out.  The  rebel 
lion  was  quenched  in  blood,  and  for  eighty-five  years 
they  remained  peaceful.  Then  began  a  period  of  inter 
mittent  raids.  The  years  1825,  1826  and  1832  were  years 
of  blood,  but  the  Yaquis  were,  at  last,  subdued  and  their 
war  chiefs,  Banderas  and  Guiteieres,  executed.  In  1867 
they  again  revolted,  and  were  again  defeated,  but  de 
spite  all  their  defeats,  they  were  not  yet  conquered. 

"They  led  a  semi-savage  life  in  the  Yaqui  valley,  but 
were  always  giving  us  trouble,  raiding  here  and  there. 
The  majority  of  them  would  seemingly  be  at  peace,  but 
human  life  was  always  more  or  less  in  danger  in  and 
near  the  Yaqui  district. 

"Isolated  bands  of  them  lived  by  plunder,  raiding-, 
foraging  and  murdering  on  the  rancherias  and  hacien 
das.  This  condition  of  things  was,  to  say  the  least,  ex 
tremely  irritating.  No  self  respecting  government  can 
tolerate  within  its  borders  gangs  of  ruffians  defying  civ- 


BY  PATH  AND   TRAIL.  53 

ilization,  law  and  order.     The  federal  government  de 
cided  to  act." 

"Were  you  then  the  general  in  command,  Don  Lo 
renzo  ? ' ' 

"No,  I  was  governor  of  Sonora;  it  was  later,  in  1892, 
that  I  was  given  command  of  this  zone.  When  war 
again  broke  out  between  the  tribe  and  the  federal  troops, 
the  Yaquis  were  very  daring,  and  numerically  strong; 
some  hot  engagements  took  place,  and  the  Yaquis  fled  to 
the  Bacatete  mountains.  From  these  hills  they  swooped 
down  upon  the  mines,  held  up  the  trails  and  mail  routes,  " 
and  terrorized  the  surrounding  country.  Our  troops 
pursued  them  into  the  mountains,  storming  their  im 
pregnable  strongholds.  It  took  ten  years  of  tedious  and 
bloody  fighting  to  reduce  them  and  bring  them  to  terms. 
We  struck  a  peace,  and  to  that  treaty  of  peace  the  Mexi 
can  government  was  true,  and  stood  by  its  terms  and 
pledges.  We  gave  the  Yaquis  twenty  times  more  land 
than  they  ever  dreamed  of  cultivating.  We  gave  them 
cattle,  tools  and  money.  We  fed  them  and  furnished 
them  seed.  We  have  been  humane  to  a  degree  unde 
served  by  the  Yaquis." 

The  general  rose  from  his  seat,  and,  for  a  few  mo 
ments,  paced  the  room  as  if  in  deep  thought.  Whether 
he  suspected  my  sympathies  were  with  the  Indians  or 
that  his  government  was  wedged  in  between  the  base  in 
gratitude  of  the  Yaquis  and  the  censure  of  the  outside 
world,  I  do  not  know,  but  he  interrupted  his  walk,  faced 
me  with  a  noticeable  shade  of  irritation  on  his  fine  face, 
and  continued : 

1 1 1  did  even  more ;  as  religion  has  a  soothing  and  paci 
fying  effect  upon  the  soul  and  the  passions,  I  obtained 
priests  and  Sisters  of  Charity  for  them;  I  established 


54  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

schools  among  them.  But  you  can't  tame  the  wolf.  Not 
withstanding  all  our  kindness  and  friendly  efforts  on 
their  behalf,  the  tribe  revolted  again  two  years  later. 
With  the  money  we  gave  them,  and  the  mission  funds, 
which  they  took  from  the  priests,  they  purchased  rifles 
and  ammunition  from  American  adventurers  and  Mexi 
can  renegades,  and  made  for  the  mountains.  In  their 
flight  for  the  hills  they  carried  with  them  one  of  the 
mission  priests  and  four  of  the  Sisters  of  Charity,  hold 
ing  them  captives  for  six  months.  This  happened  on 
July  31,  1897. " 

"Pardon  me,  general,"  I  interposed,  "but  the  most 
of  us  who  are  interested  in  the  Mexican  tribes,  believe 
the  Yaquis  to  be  Christian." 

"They  have  a  varnish  of  Christianity,  it  is  true,  but 
this  religious  wash  only  helps  to  conceal  a  deep  sub 
stratum  of  paganism;  at  heart  they  are  heathens  and 
hold  to  their  old  superstitions  and  pagan  practices. ' ' 

"So  that,  since  1897 — that  is  to  say,  for  ten  years — 
the  Mexican  government  has  been  at  war  with  the 
Yaquis  1 ' ' 

"That  is  not  the  right  word.  The  Yaquis  do  not 
fight  in  the  open,  so  that  no  real  battles  are  fought.  In 
detached  commands  we  have  to  follow  them  into  the 
mountains,  and,  as  they  know  every  rock  and  tree  of  the 
Bacatetes,  we  are  pursuing  ghosts." 

"How  many  Yaquis  are  there,  Don  Lorenzo?" 

"There  are  now  some  4,000  left  in  Sonora.  The  ma 
jority  of  these  are  peaceful,  but  sympathize  with  the 
outlaws  and  assist  them  in  many  ways.  They  all  speak 
Spanish,  dress  like  poor  Mexicans,  and  as  the  neutral 
Yaquis  aid  and  give  shelter  to  the  fighters,  we  must  re 
gard  them  all  as  enemies  of  the  republic." 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  55 

"So,  then,  there  is  no  solution  to  the  Yaqui  prob 
lem!" 

"Oh,  yes,  there  is.  We  are  sending  them  to  Yucatan, 
Tabasco  and  Chiapas,  with  their  families.  There  they 
work  in  the  henequin  or  hemp  fields  and  make  a  good 
living.  Already  we  have  transported  2,000,  and  unless 
the  other  4,000  now  here  behave  themselves,  we  will  ship 
them  to  Yucatan  also.  The  state  of  Sonora  is  as  large 
as  England,  and  cannot  be  covered  by  military  troops 
and  patrols  without  great  expense.  The  Yaqui  problem, 
as  you  are  pleased  to  call  it,  will  be  solved  in  due  time, 
and  Sonora,  when  fully  developed,  will  amaze  the  world 
with  its  riches  and  resources. ' ' 

This  expression  of  hope  and  faith  brought  my  visit 
to  a  close.  I  shook  hands  with  the  general  and  took  my 
leave  of  a  distinguished  soldier  and  a  most  courteous 
gentleman. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  PRIEST  AND  THE  YAQUIS. 

The  war  between  the  Mexican  government  and  the 
Yaquis  is  not  conducted  according  to  methods  or  prac 
tices  which  govern  civilized  nations.  It  partakes  more 
of  the  nature  of  a  Corsican  vendetta  or  a  Kentucky  feud. 
It  is  a  war  of  "  shoot  on  sight "  by  the  Mexicans,  and  of 
treachery,  cunning,  ambushment  and  midnight  slaughter 
by  the  Yaquis.  It  is  a  war  of  extermination. 

In  1861  Governor  Pesquira,  of  Sonora,  in  a  proclama 
tion  offering  $100  for  every  Yaqui  scalp  brought  in,  calls 
them  "human  wolves,"  "incarnate  demons, "  who  de 
serve  to  be  "skinned  alive. " 

1 1  There  is  only  one  way, ' '  writes  Signor  Camillo  Diaz, 
"to  wage  war  against  the  Yaquis.  We  must  enter  upon 
a  steady,  persistent  campaign,  following  them  to  their 
haunts,  hunting  them  to  the  fastness  of  their  mount 
ains.  They  must  be  surrounded,  starved,  surprised  or 
inveigled  by  white  flags,  or  by  any  methods  human  or  dia 
bolic,  and  then — then  put  them  to  death.  A  man  might 
as  well  have  sympathy  for  a  rattlesnake  or  a  tiger. ' ' 

And  now  let  me  end  this  rather  long  dissertation  on 
this  singular  tribe  by  a  citation  from  Velasco,  the  his 
torian  of  Sonora.  I  ought,  however,  to  add  that  the 
Yaqui  has  yet  to  be  heard  in  his  defense.  "Without  doubt, ' ' 
writes  Velasco,  "it  must  be  admitted  that  under  no  good 
treatment  does  the  Yaqui  abandon  his  barbarism,  his 
perfidy,  his  atrocity.  Notwithstanding  his  many  treaties 
of  peace  with  Mexico  and  the  memory  of  what  he  suf 
fered  in  past  campaigns,  yet  on  the  first  opportunity  and 


58  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

on  the  slightest  provocation  he  breaks  faith  and  becomes 
worse  than  before." 

When  I  returned  to  Guaymas  from  Torin  I  learned 
that  a  desperate  engagement  between  the  Mexican  troops 
and  the  Yaqui  Indians,  in  the  mountains  southeast  of 
this  city,  had  taken  place.  I  have  already  mentioned  a 
raid  made  by  the  Yaquis  on  the  railroad  station  of  Len- 
cho,  Sonora,  in  which  the  station  master  was  killed,  four 
men  seriously  wounded  and  three  girls  swept  to  the 
mountains.  Since  then  the  Mexicans  have  been  on  the 
trail  of  the  Yaquis ;  now  and  then  exchanging  shots,  with 
an  occasional  skirmish,  but  not  until  the  day  before  yes 
terday  did  the  enemy  and  the  Mexican  troops  come  to 
close  quarters.  One  cannot  place  much  confidence  in  the. 
wild  reports  now  circulated  on  the  streets  of  Guaymas. 
A  Mayo  runner,  who  came  in  with  dispatches  this  morn 
ing,  is  reported  to  have  said  that  the  Mexicans  lost 
twenty  men  in  the  battle,  and  that  many  of  the  wounded 
were  lying  on  the  field,  still  uncared  for,  when  he  left. 
He  says  the  Yaquis  were  defeated,  but  as  they  carried 
away  their  dead  and  wounded  when  they  retreated,  it 
was  not  known  how  many  Yaquis  were  killed.  Owing  to 
the  inaccessible  nature  of  the  country  and  its  remoteness 
from  here,  we  do  not  expect  further  particulars  until 
to-morrow.  If  the  Yaquis  had  time  to  carry  off  their 
dead  and  wounded,  depend  upon  it,  the  Mexican  troops 
gained  no  victory.  I  had  a  talk  this  afternoon  with  a 
governmental  official,  who  had  no  more  information  than 
myself,  about  the  engagement.  He  declared  in  the  course 
of  our  conversation  that  it  was  the  purpose  of  the  na 
tional  government  and  of  the  state  of  Sonora  to  exter 
minate  the  Yaquis,  and  that  the  troops  would  remain 
in  the  mountains  till  the  last  of  the  Yaquis  was  bayoneted 


BY   PATH  AND   TliAlL.  59 

or  shot.  'When  I  ventured  the  remark  that  the  authori 
ties  of  Mexico  said  the  same  thing  forty  years  ago,  have 
been  repeating  it  at  measured  intervals  ever  since,  and 
that  the  Yaquis  seem  to  be  as  far  from  annihilation  as 
they  were  in  Spanish  times,  he  became  restless,  rose  from 
his  seat  and  his  color  heightened.  I  thought  he  was  go 
ing  to  vomit.  I  steadied  him  by  ordering  up  the  cigars 
and  a  bottle  of  tequila.  He  then  informed  me  in  a  confi 
dential  whisper  that  "the  Yaquis  were,  indeed,  terrible 
fighters,  but  now  it  would  soon  be  all  up  with  them. 
Signor  Pedro  Alvarado,  the  owner  of  the  greatest  silver 
mine  in  Mexico  and  the  wealthiest  man  in  the  republic, 
had  offered  to  raise  and  keep  in  the  field  at  his  own  ex 
pense,  a  regiment  of  Mexican  'Burales'  for  the  exter 
mination  of  the  Yaquis." 

On  my  way  from  Torin  to  Guaymas  I  called  to  pay 
my  respects  to  the  priest  in  charge  of  one  of  the  inland 
villages  where  I  was  compelled  to  pass  a  night.  After 
a  very  courteous  reception  and  some  preliminary  talk, 
I  expressed  a  wish  to  have  .his  views  on  the  misunder 
standing  between  the  Mexican  government  and  the  Yaqui 
Indians.  I  adverted  to  my  interview  with  General  L.  E. 
Torres,  and  outlined  the  substance  of  our  conversation. 

"Well,"  he  began,  "if  an  impartial  tribunal,  like  The 
Hague  convention,  could  examine  the  dead  and  living 
witnesses  of  both  sides,  and  after  sifting  and  weighing 
the  result  of  the  evidence,  the  scales  of  justice  might  pos 
sibly  turn  in  favor  of  the  Indians.  It  matters  little  now 
with  whom  the  fault  rests.  The  Yaquis  cannot  get  a 
hearing,  'and  if  they  could  what  would  it  avail  them! 
It's  a  case  of  the  'race  to  the  swift,  the  battle  to  the 
strong,  and  the  weak  to  the  wall.'  When  the  American 
troops  were  carrying  extermination  to  the  Apaches  in 


60  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

Arizona,  the  Indians  were  represented  in  the  Eastern 
states  and  Middle  West  as  demons  escaped  from  hell 
and  incarnated  in  Apache  bodies.  It  was  madness  to 
offer  an  apology  for  the  Indians  or  to  hint  at  the  provo 
cation  and  treatment  goading  them  to  desperation.  The 
public  voice  had  spoken,  the  case  was  closed — Eoma 
locuta  est,  causafinita  est." 

"I  am  a  Mexican,  and  by  force  of  birth  and  family 
ties,  am  with  my  own  people,  but  as  a  priest  of  God,  I 
ought  not  to  tread  upon  the  bruised  reed  or  quench  the 
smoking  flax." 

"Are  the  Yaquis  Catholics,  padre  miol"  I  asked. 

"Fully  one-half  of  the  Yaquis  are  as  devout  Catholics 
as  any  people  of  Mexico.  The  mountaineers,  whose  an 
cestors  were  converted  to  the  faith,  are  outlaws  for  200 
years  and  retain,  as  a  tradition,  many  Catholic  ceremon 
ies  wedded  to  old  pagan  superstitions  and  practices. 
The  fact,  that  when  in  1898  they  fled  to  the  mountains 
and  carried  with  them  in  their  flight  the  parish  priest  and 
four  nuns,  and  did  them  no  harm,  is  a  convincing  proof 
that  they  still  retain  a  reverence  for  the  priesthood  and 
for  holy  women." 

"Then  at  one  time  the  whole  tribe  was  converted  to 
the  Catholic  faith!" 

"Yes,  and  if  the  greed  and  covetousness  of  politicians 
and  adventurers  had  not  foully  wronged  them,  the  mem 
bers  of  the  Yaqui  tribe  would  to-day  be  among  the  best 
and  most  loyal  citizens  of  the  Mexican  republic. 

"As  early  as  1539  Father  Marcos  of  Nizza  visited 
the  Yaquis  in  the  Sonora  valley.  Ten  years  after  Nizza 's 
visit  two  Jesuit  missionaries  took  up  their  abode  among 
them.  Other  missionaries  followed  until,  at  the  time  of 
(Hondo's  expedition  in  1683  to  Lower  California,  nearly 


BY  PATH  AND  TEAIL.  61 

all  the  tribes  of  Sonora  and  Chihuahua,  including  the 
Yaquis,  were  Christianized. 

"They  were  among  the  first  to  be  converted  by  the 
Jesuits.  Originally  extremely  warlike,  on  being  con 
verted  to  Christianity,  their  savage  nature  was  com 
pletely  subdued  and  they  became  the  most  docile  and 
tractable  of  people.  They  are  invariably  honest,  faith 
ful  and  industrious.  They  are  also  the  fishermen  and 
famous  pearl-divers  of  the  Gulf  of  California. 

"After  the  Yaquis  became  Christians  they  continued 
to  hold  to  their  tribal  unity,  while  many  of  the  other 
tribes  were  merged  in  the  older  Indian  population, 
known  as  i  Indios  Mansos. '  They  yet  retain  their  tribal 
laws  and  clanship,  and  it  is  their  loyalty  to  these  laws 
that  has  led  to  much  of  the  trouble  between  them  and  our 
government. ' ' 

"Does  the  Eepublic  of  Mexico  recognize  their  status 
as  an  independent  body  or  an  imperium  in  imperial"  I 
asked. 

"You  have  touched  the  crux  of  the  whole  question," 
he  replied.  "The  Mexican  government  has  made  many 
treaties  with  the  Yaquis,  thus  acknowledging  in  a  meas 
ure  their  separate  political  entity,  if  not  independence. 
But,  when  a  Yaqui  violates  a  Mexican  law,  the  Republic 
demands  his  surrender  that  he  may  be  tried  and  pun 
ished  by  its  own  courts,  while  on  the  other  hand,  if  a 
Mexican  commits  an  outrage  on  a  Yaqui,  our  govern 
ment  will  not  admit  the  right  of  the  Yaquis  to  try  him 
and  punish  him." 

"ButAvill  your  government  punish  him?" 

"If  it  catches  him,  and  his  crime  be  proved,  yes ;  that 
is  if  he  be  a  nobody,  but  if  he  has  money  or  influential 


62  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

•r 

friends,  he's  never  caught,  or  if  caught,  is  rarely  con 
victed. 

:'The  Indian  does  not  understand  this  way  of  doing 
things,  and  he  takes  the  law  into  his  own  hands,  and  then 
the  trouble  begins. " 

"What  was  the  opinion  of  the  early  missionary  fathers 
touching  the  Yaquis  ? ' ' 

"Among  all  the  wild  tribes  evangelized  and  civilized 
by  the  Spanish  priests,  among  the  Sinoloans,  Chihuhu- 
ans,  Tarahumaria,  Mayos  and  others,  the  Yaquis  held 
first  place,  and  were  rated  high  for  their  morality  and 
attachment  to  the  faith. 

"'The  famous  Father  Salvatierra,  who  spent  ten  years 
on  the  Yaqui  mission;  Fathers  Eusebio  Kino,  Taravel 
and  others,  have  left  on  record  their  commendations  of 
the  fidelity  of  the  Yaquis  and  the  cleanliness  of  their 
moral  lives." 

* '  It  was  a  Yaqui  chief  who  accompanied  Father  Ugarte 
when  he  mapped  and  explored  Lower  California.  When 
the  mission  of  Father  Taravel  of  Santiago,  Lower  Cali 
fornia,  was  threatened  by  the  savage  Perucci,  the  Yaquis 
sent  sixty  of  their  warriors  to  the  defense  of  the  priest 
and  his  converts.  They  offered  500  fighting  men  to  pro 
tect  the  missions  of  Bija,  California,  provided  they  were 
called  upon  and  transportation  across  the  gulf  fur 
nished  them.  In  those  days  they  were  famed  for  their 
fidelity  to  the  Spaniards,  in  fact  all  the  early  writers 
speak  kindly  of  them,  and  they  were  then  known  as  the 
'most  faithful  Yaqui  nation.7 

"When  the  missions  were  dissolved  by  the  Mexican 
government,  and  the  fathers  compelled  to  abandon  their 
posts,  the  Yaquis  and  the  Mexicans  quarreled.  In  1825 
they  revolted,  claiming  they  were  burdened  with  heavy 


BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL.  63 

taxes.  Banderas,  the  Yaqui  chief,  led  the  uprising  and 
won  material  concessions  from  our  government.  Ban 
deras  headed  another  rebellion  in  1832,  in  which  he  was 
defeated  and  slain.  The  next  uprising  was  in  1884-7, 
caused  by  encroachments  on  the  lands  of  the  tribe,  and 
the  present  war  is  due  to  the  lawless  acts  of  the  gold 
hunters  and  their  contempt  for  the  laws  of  the  Yaqui 
tribe.  They  have  the  misfortune  to  live  on  the  fringe 
of  civilization,  where  provocation  is  always  menacing. ' ' 

"If  I  am  not  trespassing  too  generously  on  your  cour 
tesy,  may  I  ask  why  the  Franciscan  fathers  abandoned 
the  missions  in  Sonora?" 

"They  did  not  abandon  the  missions/'  replied  the 
priest,  "they  were  exiled — I  do  not  like  to  use  the  word 
expelled — from  all  Mexican  territory  after  the  declara 
tion  and  separation  of  the  republic  from  Spain.  You 
see,  party  spirit,  or  rather,  racial  divergence,  was  very 
acute  and  rancorous  in  those  times.  When  the  Mexi 
cans  achieved  their  independence,  all  Spaniards,  includ 
ing  priests,  officials  and  professional  men,  were  ordered 
to  leave  the  country.  There  were  hardly  enough  native 
priests  to  administer  the  canonically  established  par 
ishes,  and  for  twenty-five  years  the  Indians  of  Sonora 
were  without  the  consoling  influence  of  the  Christian 
religion  or  the  pacifying  presence  of  the  only  men  who 
could  restrain  the  expression  of  their  warlike  instincts. " 

"So  you  are  of  the  opinion  that  if  the  missionaries 
had  remained  with  them,  the  Yaquis  would  now  be  at 
peace  with  Mexico?" 

"I  am' sure  of  it.  In  1696,  when  the  Jesuit  superior 
of  the  'Alta  Pimeria'  missions  decided  to  send  Father 
Eusebio  Kino  from  Sonora  to  open  the  mission  to  the 
4 Digger  Indians'  of  Lower  California,  the  military  gov- 


64  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

ernor  refused  to  let  Father  Kino  go,  saying  that  the 
priest  had  more  power  in  restraining  the  Indians  of  the 
Sonora  and  Yaqui  lands  than  a  regiment  of  soldiers." 

My  interview  with  this  scholarly  and  devout  priest 
was  abruptly  brought  to  a  close  by  the  arrival  of  some 
visitors.  With  the  kindness  and  affability  which  dis 
tinguish  all  the  Mexican  ecclesiastics  that  I  have  been 
privileged  to  meet,  he  insisted  upon  accompanying  me  to 
the  garden  gate,  where  with  uncovered  head  I  shook 
his  friendly  hand,  and  after  thanking  him  for  his  gra 
cious  hospitality,  bade  him  good-bye.  On  the  way  to  my 
posada,  or  lodging  house,  I  thought  of  the  honors  heaped 
upon  the  Komans  by  Macauley,  and  the  admiration  of  the 
world  for  men  like  Horatius,  who  in  defense  of  their 
country,  rush  to  death,  asking: 

"How  can  men  die  nobler, 

Than  facing  fearful  odds, 
For  the  ashes  of  their  fathers 

And  the  temples  of  their  Gods?" 


BOOK  II. 


IN  THE  LAND  OF  THE  "DIGGER  INDIAN 


CHAPTEE  VIII. 

WHEBE  MAN  ENTERS  AT  HIS  PEELL. 

Beaching  out  one  thousand  miles  into  the  Pacific 
ocean,  elongating  itself  like  a  monstrous  thing  alive, 
in  futile  attempt  to  separate  itself  from  its  parent  con 
tinent,  there  is  a  lonely  land  as  unknown  to  the  world 
as  the  vast  barbaric  interior  of  Central  Africa  or  the  re- 
pellant  coasts  of  Patagonia.  Upon  its  unhospitable  shores 
on  the  west,  the  sea  in  anger  resenting  its  intrusive  pres 
ence,  has  been  waring  for  untold  ages,  hurling  mountain 
ous  waves  of  immeasurable  strength  on  its  sandy  beach 
or  against  its  granite  fortifications.  At  times  the  waters 
of  the  Gulf  of  Cortez,  rising  in  their  wrath,  rush  with 
fierce  violence  on  its  western  flank,  and  the  sound  of 
the  impact  is  the  roaring  of  the  sea  heard  far  inland.  In 
this  war  of  the  elements  great  wounds  have  been  opened 
where  the  land  was  vulnerable,  and  indentations,  inlets 
and  deep  bays  remain  to  record  the  desperate  nature  of 
the  unending  battles  of  the  primordial  forces.  This  aw 
ful  and  vast  solitude  of  riven  mountains  and  parched 
deserts  retains  the  name  it  received  350  years  ago,  when 
baptized  in  the  blood  of  thirteen  Spaniards  slaughtered 
by  the  savages  of  this  yet  savage  wilderness.  This  is 
Baija,  Cal. — Lower  California — a  wild  and  dreary  re 
gion,  torn  by  torrents,  barrancas  and  ravines,  and  in 
places,  disfigured  by  ghastly  wounds  inflicted  by  vol 
canic  fire  or  earthquake. 

The  exterior  world  furnishes  nothing  to  compare  with 
it.  Here  are  mountains  devoid  of  vegetation,  extraor 
dinary  plateaus,  bewildering  lines  of  fragmentary  cliffs, 


68  BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL. 

a  land  where  there  are  no  flowing  rivers,  where  no  rain 
falls  in  places  for  years,  volcanoes  that  geologically  died 
but  yesterday  and  whose  configurations  and  weird  out 
lines  are  impossible  of  description.  Its  rugged  shores 
are  indented  and  toothed  like  a  crosscut  saw.  It  is  a 
land  of  sorrow  almost  deserted  of  man  and  shrouded  in 
an  isolation  startling  in  its  pitiful  silence.  Save  the  un 
profitable  cactus  and  the  sombre  sagebrush,  friends  of 
the  desert  reptiles,  there  is  no  vegetation  in  regions  of 
startling  sterility.  . 

If  there  be  upon  the  earth  a  country  lying  under  the 
pall  of  the  Isaiahan  malediction,  it  is  here;  for  here  is 
the  realization  and  accomplishment  of  the  dread  proph 
ecy  portending  the  blight  of  vegetable  life.  "I  will 
lay  it  waste,  and  it  shall  not  be  pruned  or  digged,  but 
there  shall  come  up  briars  and  thorns.  I  will  also  com 
mand  the  clouds  that  they  rain  no  rain  upon  it. ' ' 

Here  in  the  vast  interior  loneliness  of  this  forbidding 
land  are  horrent  deserts  where  the  traveler  may  ride 
hundreds  of  miles  and  find  no  water  or  look  upon  other 
vegetation  than  thorny  cacti  or  scattered  bushes  of  the 
warning  greese-wood,  telling  him  that  here  is  death.  The 
lonely  mountains  bordering  these  deserts  are  striking  in 
their  visible  sterility.  Torrential  rains  in  seasons  over 
whelm  the  struggling  vegetation  that  in  the  intervening 
months  of  repose  invade  the  few  inviting  patches,  and, 
rushing  madly  to  the  foothills,  sweep  all  vegetable  life 
before  them. 

Then,  when  the  storm  retires,  and  the  blazing  sun 
burns  the  very  air,  the  porphyritic  rocks  become  an  ashen 
white,  and,  reflecting  the  sun's  rays,  throw  off  rolling- 
billows  of  unendurable  heat.  Most  of  these  repellent 
ranges  are  granite,  but  in  many  places  there  are  found 


BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL.  69 

outcroppings  of  gneiss,  mica,  talc  and  clay  slates.  They 
underlie  the  quarternary  at  the  base  of  the  granite  hills. 
In  some  sections  the  levels  are  overlaid  with  the  detritus 
from  these  rocks.  Toward  the  Gulf  of  California  the 
slates  are  accompanied  by  metamorphic  limestones,  and 
often  appear  forming  independent  ridges  or  inclining 
toward  the  high  granite  hills.  Near  the  Pacific  coast 
the  land  is  sown  with  volcanic  cones,  broken  by  benches 
of  land  termed  mesas,  dotted  with  small  groups  of  hills 
known  as  llamas  and  by  long  faces  of  rock  called  escar- 
pas.  Immense  streams  of  lava  at  one  time  entered  the 
deserts  and  now  cover,  as  with  a  metallic  shroud,  many 
of  the  sandstone  mounds.  The  petrified  waves  and  eddies 
of  the  river  of  mineral  and  other  organic  matter,  called 
magma,  zig-zag  here  and  there  in  the  foothills,  resem 
bling  streams  of  ink  solidified.  Here  are  rocks,  aqueous 
and  igneous,  rocks  splintered  and  twisted,  and  showings 
of  grit  stones,  conglomerates,  shales,  salts  and  syenite 
basalt. 

Here,  too,  are  streams  poisoned  with  wearings  of  cop 
per,  with  salts,  arsenic  and  borax,  and  vast  beds  of  sand 
and  gypsum  covered  with  an  alkaline  crust,  and  dry 
lakes,  white  as  snow,  on  'whose  lonely  breasts  the  sand 
lies  fine  as  dust.  The  weird  solitude,  the  great  silence, 
the  grim  desolation,  the  waste  places  and  barren  deserts 
accursed  and  forsaken  of  man,  abandoned  to  the  horned 
toad,  the  tarantula  and  the  snake,  terrify  the  soul  and 
raise  a  barrier  to  exploration.  The  only  drinking  water 
to  be  found  over  an  area  of  hundreds  of  miles  is  in  rock 
depressions  and  in  holes  here  and  there  in  the  mountains 
where  the"  rain  has  collected  in  natural  tanks  hidden  from 
solar  rays  and  partially  protected  from  evaporation. 
But  there  are  seasons  when,  for  years,  no  rain  falls,  and 


70  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

then  in  this  awesome  peninsular  furnace,  the  air  is  burn 
ing,  the  sand  hot  as  volcanic  ash,  and  the  silence  like 
unto  that  which  was  when  God  said  "Let  there  be  light." 
The  deserts  of  this  mysterious  land  are  regions  of  sand 
where  earth  and  sky  form  a  circle  as  distinct  as  that 
traced  by  a  sweep  of  the  compass. 

Into  this  desolation  of  sterility  and  solitude  man  enters 
at  his  peril,  for  here  the  deadly  horned  rattlesnake,  the 
white  scorpion,  thirst  and  sweatless  heat  invite  him  to 
his  ruin  and  offer  a  constant  menace  to  life.  If  with  de 
termined  purpose  he  dares  his  fate  and  attempts  the 
crossing  of  the  parched  and  desolate  land,  the  white 
glare  reflected  from  the  treacherous  sand  threatens  him 
with  blindness.  At  times  he  encounters  the  deadly  sand 
storms  of  this  awful  wilderness  of  aridity,  the  driving 
and  whirling  sands  blister  his  face  and  carry  oppression 
to  his  breathing.  If  the  water  he  carries  fail  him,  he 
may  find  a  depression  half  full  of  mockery  and  disap 
pointment,  for  its  waters  hold  in  solution  alkali,  alum  or 
arsenic,  and  bear  madness  or  death  in  their  alluring  ap 
pearance. 

If  night  overtake  him  and  sleep  oppress  him,  he  must 
be  careful  where  he  takes  his  rest,  lest  a  storm  break 
upon  him  and  bury  him  under  its  ever-shifting  sands, 
and  if  he  sleeps  well  he  may  never  awake.  And  these 
storms  are  capricious,  for,  after  welcoming  the  unhappy 
man  to  a  hospitable  grave  in  the  desert  and  covering  him 
with  a  mound  many  feet  high  and  of  liberal  circumfer 
ence,  they  are  not  satisfied  to  let  him  rest  in  peace,  for, 
months  later,  it  may  be  years,  they  scatter  the  dune  and 
expose  the  mummified  body.  There  are  here  no  vultures  to 
clean  the  bones,  for  the  vulture  is  the  hyena  of  the  air 
and  lives  on  putrefaction,  and  there  is  here  no  decompos- 


BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL.  71 

ing  flesh.  The  carcass  of  man  or  beast  is  dried  by  solar 
suction,  the  skin  is  parched  and  blackened  and  tightens 
on  the  bones ;  the  teeth  show  white,  for  the  lips  are  gone 
with  contraction,  the  eyes  are  burned  out  and  the  sock 
ets  filled  with  sand,  and  the  hair  is  matted,  dry  and  sand- 
sprinkled.  If  the  lonely  man  be  so  unfortunate  as  to  es 
cape  death  by  suffocation,  he  awakes  with  the  dawn. 
Dawn  on  the  desert  while  the  stars  still  glow  in  cerulean 
blue.  It  is  a  vision  of  transcendent  beauty,  for  toward 
the  east  the  sky  is  bathed  in  a  sea  of  amber,  light  blue 
and  roseate.  The  stillness  is  intense,  illimitable,  it  is  the 
preternatural. 

The  man  has  lost  all  appreciation  of  the  beautiful,  the 
divine  silence  has  no  charms  for  him,  it  suggests  the 
grave.  Twilight  expands  into  day,  the  instinct  of  life, 
of  self-preservation,  dominates  him,  he  rises  and  answers 
the  call  of  the  mountains  which  allure  him  by  their  ap 
parent  nearness.  The  remorseless  sun  times  his  pace 
with  his;  if  he  stands  still,  the  sun  stands  still,  if  he 
moves  forward,  the  sun  moves  forward;  if  he  runs,  the 
sun  pursues,  and  to  the  lost  man  staggering  in  the  desert 
it  is  as  if  the  air  was  afire  and  his  brain  ablaze.  The 
pallor  of  mental  anguish  and  physical  pain  are  ashening 
his  skin ;  his  eyes  are  wild  and  shot  with  blood ;  his  fea 
tures  are  drawn  and  his  face  is  neighbor  to  death.  And 
now  he  searches  for  his  knife  and  cuts  away  his  boots, 
for  his  feet  are  swollen  shockingly,  his  hair  is 'beginning 
to  bleach,  his  gait  is  shambling,  and  the  strong  man  of 
yesterday  is  aging  rapidly.  Eeason,  for  some  time,  has 
been  bidding  him  good-bye,  and  is  now  leaving  him, — it 
is  gone  forever,  and  only  the  primal  instinct  of  self-pres 
ervation  remains  with  him  in  his  horrible  isolation  from 
human  aid.  In  this  lonely  wilderness  the  cruel  sun  pours 


72  BY  PATH  AND  TBAIL. 

down  his  intolerable  rays  till  the  very  air  vibrates  with 
waves  of  heat.  Nothing  moves,  nothing  agitates  the  awe 
some  silence,  there  is  no  motion  in  the  heavens,  in  the 
dumb,  dead  air,  on  the  burning  sand.  The  madman  tries 
to  shout,  but  his  throat  can  only  return  a  hoarse  guttural, 
and  his  blackened  tongue  hangs  out  as  he  gasps  for 
breath.  Hunger  is  gnawing  him,  thirst  is  devouring  him, 
and  he  does  not  know  it.  The  cells  of  his  brain  are  filled 
with  fire,  his  body  is  burning ;  piece  by  piece  he  has  torn 
away  his  clothes,  and  now,  from  throat  to  waist,  he  rips 
open  his  flannel  shirt  and  flings  it  from  him.  His  sight 
has  left  him,  his  paralyzed  limbs  can  no  longer  support 
his  fleshless  body,  and  blind,  naked,  demented,  he  falls 
upon  the  desert  and  is  dead.  Who  was  he?  A  pros 
pector.  Where  was  he  going?  To  the  mountains.  For 
what?  For  gold.  He  follows  is  as  did  the  wise  men  the 
star  of  Bethlehem.  It  lures  the  feet  of  men  and  often 
woos  the  rash  and  the  brave  to  death  and  madness. 

When  the  prospector  has  achieved  the  conquest  of  the 
desert  and  reached  the  mountains,  retaining  his  health 
and  strength,  he  has  accomplished  much,  but  there  yet 
remain  many  trials  and  hardships  to  test  the  courage 
and  endurance  of  the  brave  man.  Not  the  least  of  these 
is  the  wear  and  tear  on  the  mind  of  unbroken  silence  and 
absence  of  all  life.  There  is  nothing  that  shatters  cour 
age,  chills  the  heart  and  paralyzes  the  nerves  as  surely 
as  some  inexplicable  sound,  either  intermittent  or  persis 
tent.  The  brain  that  conceived  the  "wandering  voice " 
struck  the  keynote  of  terror,  and  when  Milton  described 
the  armless  hand  of  gloomy  vengeance,  pursuing  its  vic 
tim  through  lonely  places  and  striking  when  the  terrified 
man  thought  himself  within  the  security  of  darkness,  he 
gave  us  one  of  the  most  awful  examples  of  the  fears  of 


BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL.  73 

a  guilty  soul  overcome  with  helplessness  and  shook  with 
nameless  horror. 

There  are  those  now  living  in  this  forbidding  peninsu 
la  who  have  dared  and  conquered  the  burning  heat  and 
trackless  sands  of  lonely  wastes,  only  to  encounter,  when 
they  reached  their  goal  of  hope  in  the  mountains,  spec 
tres  of  the  imagination  and  the  wraiths  of  disordered 
senses.  Of  these  was  Antonio  Gallego,  a  physical  wreck, 
who  was  pointed  out  to  me  shuffling  across  the  plazuela 
in  the  town  of  San  Eafael. 

He  was  a  fine,  manly  fellow  in  his  day,  earning  a  fair 
wage  in  the  Eothschild  smelter,  when  he  took  the  mine 
fever  and  started  for  the  mountains  on  a  prospecting  ex 
pedition.  He  was  all  alone,  carrying  his  pick  and  shovel, 
water  and  food.  A  good  deal  of  desultory  wandering 
took  him  finally  into  a  little  canyon  where  he  found  a 
promising  "  outcropping, "  and  he  went  to  work  to  locate 
a  claim.  It  was  a  desolate  place,  but  beautiful  in  a  way. 
On  either  side  of  the  valley  that  formed  the  bosom  of  the 
canyon,  the  mountain  sloped  up  and  up,  until  the  purple 
tops  merged  into  the  blue  sky,  while  on  the  rock  and 
granite-strewn  acclivity  no  vegetation  took  root. 

No  game  existed  there;  the  very  birds  never  flew 
across  the  place,  and  it  was  so  sheltered  from  currents 
of  air  that  even  the  winds  had  no  voice.  This  dreadful 
and  unnatural  stillness  was  the  first  thing  that  impressed 
itself  upon  Gallego.  Particularly  at  night  time,  when  the 
stars  glittering  and  scintillating  as  they  always  seem  in 
these  solitudes,  jeweled  the  sky,  he  would  sit  at  the  open 
door  of "his  hut,  and  the  silence  would  be  so  vast  and  pro 
found  that  the  beating  of  his  own  heart  would  drum  in 
his  ear  like  the  strokes  of  a  trip-hammer.  He  was  not  a 
man  of  weird  imagination,  but  unconsciously  and  grad- 


74  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

ually  an  awe  of  the  immense  solitude  possessed  him. 
And  little  by  little,  as  he  afterward  told  the  story, 
another  feeling  stole  in  upon  him.  The  rock-ribbed  gorge 
began  to  assume  a  certain  familiarity,  as  though  he  had 
seen  the  place  in  other  days  and  only  partially  remem 
bered  it,  and  he  could  not  shake  off  a  subtle  impression 
that  he  was  about  to  hear  or  see  something  that  would 
make  this  recollection  vivid. 

There  was  no  human  being  within  a  hundred  miles, 
and  often  he  was  on  the  point  of  abandoning  the  claim 
and  retracing  his  steps.  But  before  he  could  make  up 
his  mind  he  struck  an  extraordinary  formation.  It  was 
a  sort  of  decomposed  quartz,  flaked  and  flecked  with  gold 
in  grains  as  large  as  pin  heads,  and  ragged  threads  that 
looked  as  if  they  had  at  one  time  been  melted  and  run 
through  the  rock.  Antonio  knew  enough  to  be  satisfied 
that  it  would  not  take  much  of  the  "stuff"  to  make  him 
rich,  and  he  worked  with  feverish  haste,  uncovering  the 
ledge.  On  the  second  day  after  his  discovery,  he  was  at 
the  bottom  of  his  shallow  shaft,  when  suddenly  he  paused 
and  listened  to  what  he  thought  was  the  sound  of  a 
church  bell.  He  rested  on  his  shovel,  the  bell  was  ring 
ing  and  the  sound  was  pleasant  to  his  ears.  It  reminded 
him  of  home,  of  the  Sunday  mass,  and  the  fond,  familiar 
church,  but  above  all,  it  brought  back  to  him  the  faces  of 
the  old  companions  and  acquaintances  he  met  in  the 
church  square  Sunday  after  Sunday,  and  the  veiled  and 
sinewy  forms  and  faces  of  the  senoritas  crossing  the 
plaza  to  hear  mass.  How  long  he  had  been  dreamily 
listening  to  the  church  bell  he  did  not  know,  but  suddenly 
the  thought  came  to  him  that  there  could  be  no  church 
nearer  than  a  hundred  miles.  Still  he  could  hear  the  bell 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  75 

distinctly,  faint  and  as  if  afar,  yet  perfectly  clear.  It 
sounded,  too,  like  Ms  parish  bell. 

Antonio  sprang  out  of  his  shaft  and  stood  listening. 
The  sound  confused  him  and  he  could  not  tell  exactly 
from  what  direction  it  came.  It  seemed  now  north,  now 
south,  and  now  somewhere  above  him,  but  it  continued  to 
ring,  reminding  him  it  was  time  for  mass.  Then  the  bell 
ceased  to  ring;  ah!  thought  the  lone  man,  "the  priest  is 
at  the  altar  and  mass  has  begun. ' ' 

The  excitement  of  the  mine  had  passed  away  from  him 
as  fever  from  a  sick  man.  A  sort  of  inertia  crept  over 
him  and  he  dropped  his  shovel  and  idled  for  the  rest  of 
the  day,  thinking  about  the  bell.  As  yet  he  was  not 
afraid,  but,  that  night,  seated  before  his  lonely  cabin,  he 
heard  the  slow,  rhythmic  sound  of  the  bell  once  again; 
he  felt  an  icy  creeping  in  his  scalp  and  turned  sick  with 
dread.  He  was  afraid  of  the  awful  solitude  and  afraid 
to  be  alone  with  the  mysterious  sound.  He  knew  it  could 
be  no  bell,  knew  that  it  must  be  an  hallucination,  yet  be 
fore  it  stopped,  he  went  nearly  mad. 

The  next  time  he  heard  it  was  in  the  afternoon  of  the 
following  day.  He  stared  about  him  and  the  old  sense 
of  familiarity  returned  ten-fold.  The  granite  gorge 
seemed  teeming  with  some  horrible  secret  or  a  spectre 
was  soon  to  appear  and  speak  to  him.  He  feared  to  look 
around  him  lest  the  awful  thing  would  draw  near.  And 
now  the  bell  begins  to  toll  for  the  dead,  and  Antonio 
hears  a  voice  from  the  air  saying,  "She  is  dead,  she  is 
dead. "  "  Ah,  Cara  Mia, ' '  spoke  the  lone  man, ' '  my  heart 
is  dead  within  me,  but  I  must  go  to  your  funeral  and  see 
you  laid  to  rest,  and  I'll  soon  be  with  you."  Still  the  bell 
kept  tolling.  Before  it  ceased,  Antonio  was  flying  out  of 
the  canyon,  haggard,  muttering  to  himself,  wildly  ges- 


76  BY  PATH  AND  TBAIL. 

tieulating,  and  tears  flowing  down  his  cheeks.  He  made 
his  way  to  San  Bafael,  starting  up  at  night  to  hurry  on, 
and  pushing  over  the  almost  impenetrable  country  at 
such  a  speed  that  when  he  reached  his  destination  he  was 
Broken  down,  a  wreck  and  half  demented. 

At  times  the  awful  solitude,  the  immeasurable  stillness 
and  isolation  from  human  homes  close  in  upon  the  lonely 
prospector  and  wear  down  the  texture  of  the  brain.  So 
stealthily  does  the  enemy  of  sanity  creep  in  upon  the  do 
minion  of  the  mind,  that  the  doomed  man  is  not  con 
scious,  or  only  dreamly  conscious,  of  its  approach.  In 
the  beginning  he  notices  that  he  is  talking  aloud  to  him 
self,  then,  after  a  time,  he  talks  as  if  some  one  is  listen 
ing  to  him,  and  presently  his  questions  are  answered  by, 
presumedly,  a  living  voice.  Then,  at  his  meals,  going  and 
coming  from  his  cabin,  when  he  is  burrowing  into  the 
side  of  a  prospect,  he  hears  a  lone  voice  or  many  voices 
in  conversation  or  in  angry  altercation.  It  is  no  use  try 
ing  to  persuade  himself  that  his  imagination  is  imposing 
on  his  sense  of  hearing,  the  voices  are  too  real  and  audi 
ble  for  that.  Presently,  lonely  apparitions  float  in  the 
air,  mist-like  and  misshapen  at  first ;  then,  as  they  ap 
proach  nearer,  they  assume  human  forms,  descend 
to  the  earth  and  begin  to  talk  and  gesticulate.  Then 
sometimes  the  wraith  of  a  dead  companion  appears  to 
him,  walks  with  him  to  his  rude  hut  a  mile  away,  talks 
over  old  times,  sits  with  him  at  his  meals  and  sleeps  with 
him.  Nor,  when  wind-tanned  and  sun-scorched,  he  re 
turns  to  his  friends,  may  he  ever  be  talked  out  of  his  de 
lusions.  He  has  heard  the  voices,  seen  the  spectres,  com 
panioned  with  the  dead  and  there 's  the  end  of  it.  Some 
thing  like  this  happened  to  Pedro  Pomaro  who  died,  a 
rich  man,  a  few  years  ago,  in  the  little  burg  of  Santa 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  77 

Bosilla,  at  the  foot  of  Monta  Reccia.  He  was  prospect 
ing  in  the  Eugenia  range  with  Alphonso  Thimm,who  per 
ished  of  mountain  fever  seven  weeks  after  they  made 
camp.  Pedro  buried  his  friend  and  companion  in  a  side 
of  the  mountain,  said  a  "de  profundis"  for  the  repose 
of  his  soul,  and  returned  to  his  lonely  tent.  Three  days 
after  the  burial  of  his  companion,  he  was  examining  some 
ore  he  had  taken  out  of  the  shaft,  when  he  saw  Alphonso 
coming  toward  him.  He  dropped  the  sample  and  began 
to  run,  shouting  for  help.  He  fell  at  last  from  exhaus^- 
tion  and  lost  consciousness.  When  he  returned  to  his 
senses,  Thimm  was  gone  and  Pedro  retraced  his  way  back 
to  his  tent.  The  next  afternoon,  at  about  4  o'clock,  when 
he  was  working  at  the  shaft,  Alphonso  again  appeared; 
and  held  him  by  his  glittering  eye,  as  did  the  Ancient 
Mariner  the  wedding  guest.  He  beckoned  to  Pedro  to 
follow  him  and  Pedro  followed.  The  ghost  led  him  away 
to  the  north,  over  rocky,  broken  ridges,  and  at  last 
stopped.  Then  he  took  Pedro  by  the  arm  and  said, 
'  '  Come  here  to-morrow  and  dig. ' '  Thimm  vanished,  and 
Pedro,  marking  the  spot  the  ghostly  finger  pointed  out, 
dragged  himself  back  to  his  tent.  He  awoke  at  noon  the 
next  day,  cooked  and  eat  his  simple  meal,  and,  shoulder 
ing  his  miner's  pick,  returned  to  the  place  shown  him  by 
his  dead  companion.  Here  he  discovered  and  located  the 
"El  Collado"  mine,  which  he  sold  to  a  Mexican  syndi 
cate  for  30,000  pesos.  Ghost  or  no  ghost,  Pedro  found 
the  mine,  and  from  the  proceeds  of  the  sale  built  him 
self  a  pretentious  and  comfortable  homse,  occupied  to 
day  By  one  of  his  daughters  with  her  husband  and  chil 
dren. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  DEAD  OF  THE  DESERT. 

I  was  privileged  last  evening  to  be  the  guest  of  Don 
Estaban  Guiteras  and  his  charming  family,  and  when 
it  was  time  to  renew  the  expression  of  my  appreciation 
of  his  hospitality  and  bid  him  good  night,  I  deeply  re 
gretted  that  Mexican  etiquette  forbade  me  to  prolong 
my  visit.  Don  Estaban  is  now  in  the  evening  of  a  life 
largely  spent  in  deserts  and  mountains,  and  it  is  allotted 
to  few  men  to  pass  through  his  experiences  and  retain  a 
fair  measure  of  health,  or  indeed,  to  survive.  Wind- 
tanned  and  sun-scorched,  he  is  a  rugged  example  of  in 
domitable  courage  and  of  unshaken  determination,  to 
whom  good  luck  and  success  came  when  despair  was  rid 
ing  on  his  shadow. 

I  questioned  him  of  the  desert,  the  mountains,  the  can 
yons,  and  never  was  boy  preparing  for  his  first  commu 
nion  more  familiar  with  his  catechism  than  was  Don  Es 
taban  with  the  gruesome  wonders  of  the  lonely  places  of 
the  peninsula. 

He  told  me  of  a  region  where  many  men  had  died  of 
thirst,  and  to  which  flocks  of  ducks  and  water  fowl  came 
year  after  year  in  the  migratory  season ;  of  places  where 
rain  is  almost  unknown,  yet  where  clouds  come  of  a  night 
and,  breaking  on  some  lofty  peak,  hurl  thousands  of  tons 
of  water  upon  the  land,  altering  the  forms  and  shapes  of 
mountains, -ploughing  deep  gorges  here,  and  there  fill 
ing  others  with  great  boulders,  and  changing  the  face 
of  the  country.  He  spoke  of  deserts  where  men  go  mad 
with  heat,  throw  their  canteen,  half -filled  with  life-saving 


80  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

water,  out  into  the  waste  of  sand,  and,  tearing  and  rip 
ping  every  shred  of  clothing  from  their  emaciated  bodies, 
shout  at  and  damn  the  imaginary  fiends  mocking  them. 
He  asked  me  why  it  was  that  the  skulls  of  men,  who  per 
ish  of  heat  and  thirst  on  the  desert,  split  wide  open  as 
soon  as  life  has  left  their  trembling  limbs?  I  answered 
I  had  never  heard  of  the  weird  and  singular  phenomenon. 
"Yes,"  he  continued,  "I  have  seen  dead  men  in  the 
Hormiga  desert,  and  the  skull  of  every  one  of  them  was 
gaping.  So  dry  is  the  air  of  these  regions,  so  hungry  is 
it  for  the  heart's  blood  of  its  victim,  that  no  sooner  do 
men  die  than  the  hot  air  envelopes  them,  and,  like  a 
devil-fish,  sucks  from  their  tissues,  veins  and  arteries  all 
blood  and  water.  I  have  followed  the  trail  of  dead  men 
by  the  shreds  and  rags,  the  knife,  revolver  and  canteen 
flung  away  and  torn  from  them  in  their  delirium;  and 
when  I  came  upon  their  bodies,  the  hair  was  ashen  gray, 
the  skulls  split  open  and  the  bodies  stark  naked.  Of  tha 
skull,  the  remorseless  heat  makes  a  veritable  steam  chest, 
and  when  the  sutured  bone  walls  can  no  longer  stand  the 
awful  strain,  the  skull  splits  open  and  the  brain  pro 
trudes.  I  was  traveling  one  afternoon  with  a  companion 
over  the  Muerto  desert  when  the  braying  of  one  of  my 
burros  called  us  to  a  halt.  A  walking  burro  never  brays 
while  the  sun  shines  unless  it  sees  or  scents  danger. 
Lifting  my  field  glass  I  saw,  far  away  to  our  left,  a  man 
evidently  in  distress.  We  altered  our  course,  and,  as  we 
drew  to  hailing  distance,  the  man,  completely  naked,  ran 
to  meet  us,  wildly  gesticulating,  'Ritrarse,  ritrarse' — go 
back,  go  back — he  shouted, i  the  demons  are  too  many  for 
us,  let  us  run,  let  us  run.'  We  gave  the  poor  fellow  a 
few  sips  of  water, and  after  a  while  fed  him  chocolate  and 
crackers,  and  brought  him  with  us.  Striking  out  diagon- 


BY  PATH  AND  TEAIL.  81 

ally  across  the  sands,  we  found  his  canteen,  three-quar 
ters  full  of  clear,  fresh  water.  When  his  mind  was  giv 
ing  away  he  sat  down  to  rest,  and,  rising,  strayed  away, 
he  knew  not  whither,  forgetting  his  food  and  water. ' ' 

"Why  do  men  lose  their  reason  in  the  desert ?"  I  asked 
Don  Estaban. 

"Well,"  said  he,  "many  of  these  men,  by  dissipation 
and  evil  habits  in  early  manhood  have  weakened  an$  im 
paired  their  brains.  Others  were  born  with  a  weak  men 
tality,  so  that  when  the  merciless  heat  beats  down  upon 
them,  when  fatigue,  and  often  hunger  and  thirst,  seize 
upon  them,  the  weakest  part  of  the  human  system  is  the 
first  to  surrender.  Then  the  intense  and  sustained  si 
lence  of  the  desert,  the  immeasurable  waste  of  sand 
around  them,  and  the  oppression  on  the  mind  of  the  in 
terminable  desolation  and  solitude  carry  melancholy  to 
the  soul,  and  the  weakened  mind  breaks  down. 

"It  is  what  happens,  at  times,  to  men  who  go  out  on 
the  desert;  they  perish  and  are  heard  of  no  more.  The 
drifting  sand  covers  them,  and  when  years  after  their 
burial,  a  hurricane  of  wind  races  over  the  desert,  it  scat 
ters  the  sand  which  hides  them,  opens  the  grave  as  it  were, 
and  carrying  the  bodies  with  it,  separates  the  bones  and 
drops  them  here  and  there  on  the  bosom  of  the  ocean  of 
sand.  A  curious  thing, "  continued  Don  Estaban,  "hap 
pens  when  the  strong  winds  blow  on  the  desert,  a  some 
thing  occurs  which  always  reminds  me  of  the  continu 
ous  presence  of  God  everywhere  and  of  His  providence. 
Does  not  the  Bible  somewhere  speak  of  the  birds  which 
the  Heavenly  Father  feedeth  and  the  lilies  of  the  field 
which  He  cares  for?  Well,  the  desert  plants  are  a  living 
proof  of  God's  love  for  all  created  things. 

"When  these  sandstorms  are  due,  and  before  they  rush 


82  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

in  upon  the  mighty  waste  of  silence  and  sand,  the  cacti 
and  the  flower-bearing  plants  droop  down  and  lie  low 
along  the  earth.  Then,  when  the  storms  have  passed,  the 
plants  slowly,  cautiously,  as  if  to  make  sure  their  enemy 
is  gone,  rise  again  to  their  full  height.  Only  the  mesquite 
and  grease-wood  of  toughened  and  hardened  fibre  refuse 
to  bow  down  to  the  tyrant  of  the  hurricane,  and  unless  torn 
up  by  the  roots  they  never  yield.  But  the  cacti,  save 
alone  the  pitahaya,  of  giant  strength,  tremble  at  the  ap 
proach  of  the  storm,  contract,  shrivel  up  and  lie  low. 

"I  have  often,  in  my  tramps  across  deserts,  stopped 
and  examined  a  cactus  which  we  call  the  'Bodillo.'  It 
has  no  roots,  is  perfectly  rounded,  and  its  spires  or  nee 
dles,  for  some  mysterious  reason,  point  inward,  as  if  its 
enemy  were  within  itself.  Unless  it  draws  its  nourish 
ment  from  the  air,  I  do  not  know  how  it  survives.  It  is 
the  plaything  of  the  winds.  When  the  sand  storm  riots 
in  the  desert,  the  wind  plays  with  the  'Bodillo'  and  rolls 
it  along  forty  or  fifty  miles. " 

"How  often  do  these  storms  come,  senor?" 

"Well,  it's  this  way;  for  your  winters  in  the  North 
you  have  snow  and  ice,  in  the  South  they  have  rain;  here 
on  our  deserts  we  have  winds,  and  these  winds  are  with 
us  for  three  months,  mild  as  a  sea  breeze  to-day,  and  to 
morrow  rushing  with  the  speed  of  a  hurricane.  But  to 
come  back  to  the  '  Eodillo. '  When  the  storm  of  wind  has 
lifted,  this  ball  cactus  is  left  on  the  desert,  and  if  during 
the  vernal  equinox  rain  falls,  the  plant  throws  out  a  few 
rootlets,  gets  a  grip  somewhere  in  the  sand  till  it  flowers 
and  seeds,  and  is  off  again  with  the  next  wind. ' ' 

"Is  there  any  hope  for  a  man  if  he  runs  short  of  water 
forty  or  fifty  miles  out  in  the  desert?" 

"A  man,"  replied  my  host,  "who  is  taught  to  desert 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  83 

ways,  never  dies  of  thirst.  An  Indian  will  enter  a  desert 
stretching  away  for  two  hundred  miles,  carrying  with 
him  neither  food  nor  water,  and  yet  it  is  a  thing  unheard 
of  for  an  Indian  to  go  mad  on  the  sandy  waste,  or  die  of 
hunger  or  thirst.  God  in  His  kindness  and  providence 
has  made  provision  for  man  and  animal,  even  in  the 
great  deserts.  There  is  no  desolation  of  sand  so  utterly 
bare  and  barren  that  here  and  there  upon  its  forbidden 
surface  there  may  not  be  found  patches  of  the  grease- 
wood,  the  mesquite  and  the  cactus.  Now  the  cholla,  and 
tuna,  and  the  most  of  the  cacti,  bear  fruit  in  season,  and 
from  these  fruits  the  Indians  make  a  score  of  dainty 
dishes.  Even  when  not  bearing,  their  barks  and  roots, 
when  properly  prepared,  will  support  life.  Nor  need  any- 
man  die  of  thirst,  for  the  pitahaya  and  suaharo  cacti  are 
reservoirs  of  water,  cool,  fresh  and  plentiful.  But  then, 
one  must  know  how  to  tap  the  stream.  By  plunging  a 
knife  into  the  heart,  the  water  begins  to  ooze  out  slowly 
and  unsatisfactorily,  but  still  enough  comes  to  save  a 
man's  life.  Of  course,  you  know  that  the  man  familiar 
with  the  moods  of  the  desert  never  travels  without  a  can, 
matches  and  a  hatchet.  When  he  is  running  short  of 
water  he  makes  for  the  nearest  bunch  of  columnar  cacti, 
as  the  pitahaya  and  suaharo  are  called  by  us.  He  selects 
his  tree  and  cuts  it  down,  having  already  made  two  fires 
eiglft  or  ten  feet  apart.  Then  he  makes  a  large  incision 
in  the  middle  of  the  tree,  cuts  off  the  butt  and  the  end, 
and  places  the  log  between  the  fires,  ends  to  fires.  The 
heat  of  the  fires  drives  the  water  in  the  log  to  its  center, 
when  it  begins  to  flow  from  the  cut  already  made  into 
his  can.  It  is  by  this  method  the  Indian  and  the  expert 
desert  traveler  renew  their  supply  of  water." 

Communing  with  myself,  on  the  way  to  my  hotel,  I 


84  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

tHought,  "  So,  after  all  is  said  and  done,  education  is  very 
much  a  matter  of  locality.  In  large  centers  of  popula 
tion  the  theologian,  the  philosopher,  the  scientist,  is  a 
great  man ;  but  thrown  on  his  own  resources,  on  the  wide 
deserts,  in  the  immense  forests,  he  is  a  nobody  and  dies. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  man  bred  to  desert  ways  or 
trained  to  forest  life,  is  the  educated  man  in  the  wilder 
ness,  for  he  has  conquered  its-  secrets.  That  training,, 
then,  apart  from  the  supernatural,  which  best  prepares 
a  man  to  succeed  in  his  sphere,  which  develops  the  facul 
ties  demanded  by  his  occupation  or  calling,  which  makes 
him  an  honest,  rugged,  manly  man,  is  education  in  the 
best  acceptance  of  the  often  ill-used  term." 


CHAPTEE  X. 

THE  FIGHT  FOB  LIFE. 

Don  Estaban  Guiteras  did  me  the  kindness  to  accept 
an  invitation  to  dine  with  me  this  evening  and  pay  me  a 
parting  visit,  for  I  leave  Bnena  Vista  to-morrow,  and 
may  never  again  tread  its  hospitable  streets.  He  ac 
companied  me,  after  dinner,  to  my  hotel  room,  and  after 
opening  a  bottle  of  Zara  Maraschino  and  lighting  our 
cigars,  I  induced  him  to  continue  the  conversation  along 
the  lines  traced  out  the  evening  I  was  his  guest. 

He  spoke  of  beds  of  lakes  on  mountains  4,000  feet  above 
the  sea,  and  of  fossil  and  petrified  skeletons  of  strange 
fish  and  animals  found  in  the  beds ;  of  the  singular  habit 
of  the  desert  rat  which,  when  about  to  die,  climbs  the 
mesquite  tree  and  prepares  its  own  grave  in  the  crotch; 
of  the  desert  ants,  which  build  mounds  miles  apart  in 
tEe  desert  and  open  an  underground  tunnel  between 
them.  He  told  of  the  migration  of  ants  to  the  moun 
tains,  the  military  precision  of  their  movements  on  the 
march,  their  racapity,  the  blight  of  all  vegetable  life 
after  the  myriad  hosts  had  passed,  and  of  the  red  and 
black  ants  and  their  fierce  and  exterminating  battles. 
He  referred  to  the  strange  ways  of  the  "side  winder," 
or  desert  rattle  snake,  of  the  wisdom  of  lizards  and 
other  reptiles,  and  of  animals  living  and  dying  on  the 
great  ocean  of  sand,  and  of  the  skeletons  of  men  who 
went  mad  and  died  alone  on  the  wilderness  of  desola 
tion. 


86  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 


DON  ESTABAN'S  STORY. 


"Were  you  ever  lost  on  the  desert,  Senor  Guiteras?" 

"No,"  he  answered,  "but  when  I  was  a  young  man 
and  was  not  as  well  acquainted  with  the  ways  of  the 
Disierto  as  I  am  now,  I  had  a  trying  experience,  and 
nearly  lost  my  life. 

"It  was  on  the  'Muerto,'  and  I  wandered  ninety  miles 
over  sands  so  hot  that  I  could  scarcely  walk  on  them, 
though  wearing  thick-soled  shoes.  The  Muerto  desert  is 
in  circumference  230  miles,  and  is,  in  fact,  the  bed  of  an 
ancient  sea,  which  evaporated  or  disappeared  many  thou 
sands  of  years  ago.  During  the  months  of  July  and  Au 
gust  the  Muerto  is  a  furnace,  where  the  silence  is  oppres 
sive,  the  glare  of  the  ash-hot  sand  blinds  the  eyes,  and 
the  burning  air  sucks  water  and  life  from  the  body  of 
man  or  beast.  I  left  the  '  Digger'  camp  at  the  foot  of  the 
Corneja  mountain  early  in  the  week,  intending  to  in 
spect  a  copper  'find'  discovered  by  an  Indian  some  fifty 
miles  southwest  of  the  Digger  camp.  The  trail  carried 
me  through  an  ancient  barranca,  widening  into  a  gorge 
which  opened  into  a  canyon,  through  which  in  season 
flows  what  is  called  the  Eio  Eata.  Here  I  made  camp  for 
the  day,  cooked  a  meal  and  slept,  for  I  had  started  as 
early  as  3  o'clock  in  the  morning.  The  heat  within  the 
canyon  marked  90  degrees  on  a  small  pocket  thermome 
ter  I  carried  to  test  the  temperature  of  the  nearest  water 
to  the  reported  'find.'  As  the  air  about  me  carried  only 
10  or  12  degrees  of  humidity,  this  heat  in  no  way  incon 
venienced  me.  At  4  o'clock  that  afternoon  I  awoke,  con 
tinued  on  through  the  canyon,  and  in  two  hours  entered 
the  desert. 

"You  must  understand  that  in  this  country  no  man  in 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  87 

his  senses  attempts  the  crossing  of  a  great  desert  during 
the  day.  The  sun  would  roast  him,  the  sands,  hot  as  vol- 
acnic  ash,  would  burn  him  up,  and  he  could  not  carry 
enough  water  to  meet  the  evaporation  from  his  body.  For 
half  the  night  I  made  good  progress,  so  good  indeed  that 
I  began  to  whisper  to  myself  that  before  8  o  'clock  of  the 
morning  I  would  strike  the  foothills  of  the  Sierras  Blan- 
cas  and  leave  the  desert  behind  me. 

' 1  Perhaps  I  had  been  pushing  myself  too  much,  or  it 
may  be  that  I  was  not  in  the  best  of  condition,  but  about 
3  in  the  morning  I  sat  down  to  rest.  I  was  traveling  light 
and  brought  with  me  only  enough  water  and  food  to  last 
me  fourteen  hours,  knowing  that  when  I  reached  the 
Blancas  I  could  find  the  mining  camp  of  Pedro  Marrila. 
To  a  meditative  man,  the  desert  at  night  has  a  charm 
deepening  into  a  fascination.  The  intense  and  sustained 
silence,  the  great  solitude,  the  limitless  expansion  of 
white  sand  glistening  under  a  bright  moon,  and  innum 
erable  stars  of  wondrous  brilliancy  strangely  affect  the 
mind  and  bear  in  upon  the  soul  a  sensation  of  awe,  of 
reverence  and  a  consciousness  of  the  presence  of  God. 

" After  a  time,  an  inexpressible  sense  of  drowsiness 
possessed  me.  I  had  often  traveled  far  on  deserts,  but 
never  before  had  I  felt  so  utterly  tired  and  sleepy.  I  re 
membered  saying  to  myself,  'Just  for  a  half  hour/  and 
when  I  awoke  the  sun  was  rising  over  the  mountains.  I 
rose  to  my  feet,  blessed  myself,  and  moved  on,  knowing 
I  was  going  to  have  a  hard  fight  of  it. 

"At  10  o'clock  the  heat  was  that  of  a  smelting  fur 
nace.  As"  I  walked  my  feet  sank  in  the  yielding  sand.  I 
was  very  thirsty,  but  I  could  not  touch  the  water  in  my 
canteen,  treasuring  it  as  a  miser  his  gold.  The  blazing 
sun  sucked  away  all  perspiration,  before  it  had  time  to 


88  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

become  sweat  and  collect  upon  the  skin.  To  sweat  would 
have  helped  me,  but  no  man  sweats  in  the  desert.  I  now 
discarded  all  my  clothing  but  my  undershirt,  drawers, 
hat  and  boots,  even  my  stockings  I  flung  upon  the  dry 
sand. 

"And  now,  for  the  first  time,  I  took  a  drink  from  my 
canteen,  not  much,  but  enough  to  partially  quench  the 
fire  of  my  parched  tongue.  I  had  my  senses  about  me,  I 
retained~my  will,  and  I  took  the  water,  for  I  knew  that 
my  tongue  was  beginning  to  swell.  At  noon  I  struck  a 
pot-hole,  or  sink,  half  filled  with  clear,  sparkling  water. 
I  took  some  of  it  up  in  the  lid  of  my  canteen,  touched  my 
tongue  to  it  and  found  it  to  be,  what  I  suspected,  impreg 
nated  with  copperas  and  arsenic.  My  body  was  on  fire, 
and  thinking  to  obtain  some  relief,  I  soaked  my  shirt, 
drawers  and  shoes  in  the  beautiful  cool  water,  and  in  my 
wet  clothes  struck  for  the  mountains,  looming  some 
twenty  miles  ahead  of  me.  I  was  a  new  man,  and 
for  an  hour  I  felt  neither  thirst  nor  fatigue. 

6  '  Then  a  strange  numbness  began  to  creep  over  my 
body.  It  was  not  pain,  but  a  feeling  akin  to  what  I  have 
been  told  incipient  paralytics  feel  when  the  demon  of 
paralysis  has  a  grip  on  them.  I  sat  down,  drank  some 
water,  and  for  the  first  time  since  I  left  the  canyon's 
mouth,  took  some  food.  When  I  tried  to  rise  I  fell  over 
on  my  side,  but  I  got  up,  lifted  my  canteen  and  looked 
around  me." 

"Pardon  me,  Don  Estaban,  was  your  mind  becoming 
affected? " 

"No,  my  brain  was  clear  and  my  will  resolute.  They 
say  hope  dies  hard.  My  hope  never  died,  I  pushed  on, 
resolved  if  I  must  die,  it  would  be  only  when  my  tired  or 
diseased  limbs  could  no  longer  obey  my  will.  Ten  miles, 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  89 

at  least,  I  walked,  the  fierce  sun  beating  down  remorse 
lessly  upon  me.  Walked,  did  I  say?  I  dragged  myself 
through  hell,  lor  my  bones  were  grinding  in  the  joints, 
my  skin  was  aflame  and  three  times  I  vomited.  I  fought 
the  cravings  of  my  body,  for  if  I  sat  down  I  might  never 
arise.  Not  a  living  thing  was  anywhere  in  sight.  I  be 
lieve  I  would  have  welcomed  a  brood  of  rattlesnakes,  of 
scorpions,  of  tarantulas,  so  deathly  quiet  was  the  air 
around  me. 

' '  Out  in  the  lonely  desert  I  deliberately  stripped  to  the 
nude,  dipped  my  hands  in  my  canteen  and  rubbed  my 
body.  I  then,  as  best  I  could,  beat  and  shook  my  shirt  and 
drawers,  for  I  now  began  to  suspect  I  was  being  poisoned 
by  the  copperas  and  arsenic  in  which  I  had  dipped  my 
clothes.  J)ios,  how  hot  the  air  was,  how  fiercely  blazed 
the  sun,  how  the  burning  sand  threw  out  and  into  my  face 
and  eyes  the  pitiless  glare  and  heat. 

"I  dressed,  and,  taking  my  canteen,  slowly  but  reso 
lutely  set  my  face  for  the  mountains,  now  nearing  me. 
Once  I  fell,  but  in  falling  saved  the  water.  With  a  pain 
ful  effort  I  rose  up,  took  a  mouthful  of  water,  and  on 
ward  I  went,  while  the  firmament  was  cloudless  o'er  my 
head." 

Don  Estaban  paused  in  his  painful  and  fascinating 
narrative,  took  a  few  sips  of  maraschino,  and  said: 

"I  will  weary  you  no  further  with  the  story  of  my  aw 
ful  experience  in  that  accursed  waste  of  sand  and  heat. 
I  reached  the  foothills,  how  I  scarcely  know,  but  I  lost 
consciousness,  not  my  reason,  and  those  who'  found  me 
and  cared*f  or  me  told  me  they  thought  I  was  dead  when 
they  lifted  me  from  the  arroyo  into  which  I  had  fallen. ' ' 

"Did  you  ever  get  over  the  effects  of  that  awful  trip?" 
I  asked. 


90  ,  BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL. 

"Oh,  yes,"  he  said,  "in  three  months  I  was  as  well 
as  I  ever  was.  We  Mexicans  are  tough,  and  if  we  only 
take  care  of  ourselves  when  young,  we  can  stand  any 
thing.  You  see,  like  the  Irish,  we  are  the  sons  of  pure 
mothers,  who  obey  the  laws  of  God  and  nature. " 

When  Don  Estaban  rose  to  depart,  he  took  from  his 
pocket  a  photograph  of  himself  and  his  family,  and 
handed  it  to  me,  saying:  "Espero  que  le  volvere  a  ver  a 
usted  pronto" — I  hope  to  see  you  soon  again. 

I  took  it  gratefully  and  tenderly  from  his  hand,  assur 
ing  him  of  my  appreciation  of  his  kindness,  my  affection 
and  admiration  for  himself  and  his  family,  and  prom 
ised  to  send  him  from  Mexico  City  a  copy  of  my  "Days 
and  Nights  in  the  Tropics. "  I  accompanied  him  to  the 
street,  arid,  in  farewell,  shook  the  hand  of  a  straight  and 
honest  man,  whose  rugged  face  I  may  never  look  upon 
again. 


-Copyright  by  Underwood  &  Underwood,  New  York. 

HALF-BLOOD  COWBOYS,   LOWER  CALIFORNIA. 


CHAPTER  XL 

THE  DIGGER  INDIANS. 

Although  Lower  California  remains  to-day  as  an  awful 
example  of  some  tremendous  bouleversement  in  the  Mio 
cene  age,  a  land  of  gloom  and  largely  of  abject  sterility, 
yet  it  has  redeeming  features,  and  there  are  hopes  of 
salvation  for  this  gruesome  peninsula.  For  example, 
there  have  lately  been  discovered  on  the  Gulf  coast  large, 
very  large  deposits  of  sulphur,  and  north  of  La  Paz,  im 
mense  beds  of  almost  pure  salt.  At  and  around  the  Cer- 
abo  islands,  the  pearl  fisheries,  once  so  productive  and 
valuable,  are  again  becoming  promising.  In  the  northern 
part  of  the  peninsula  there  is  much  excellent  grazing 
land,  calculated  at  900,000  acres,  where  alfalfa,  burr  and 
wild  clover,  and  fields  of  wild  oats,  four  feet  long  and 
full  of  grain,  thrive.  Along  the  shores  of  the  Bay  of 
San  Marco  they  are  now  quarrying  from  vast  beds  the 
finest  alabaster  in  America.  At  Todos  Santos  there  are 
large  quarries  of  white  and  variegated  marble,  and  in 
the  neighboring  mountains  great  deposits  of  copper  ore 
carrying  much  silver.  At  Ensenada  the  Rothschilds  con 
trol  the  mines,  and  have  erected  large  smelting  works  to 
reduce  the  ore. 

Lower  California  has  two  capitals,  Ensenada,  on  the 
North  Pacific  coast,  and  La  Paz,  far  down  on  the  gulf. 
The  tremendous  barriers  of  mountains  and  deserts  be 
tween  the  two  coasts  and  the  distance  by  water  around 
Cape  San  Lucas,  have  made  two  capitals  a  necessity.  La 
Paz,  at  the  head  of  a  fine,  deep  bay  of  the  same  name, 
has  a  population  of  about  3,000,  nearly  all  Mexicans.  It 


92  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

is  a  town  of  one  broad,  straight  street,  with  witewashed 
houses  of  stone,  one  story  high,  tree-shaded,  verandahed 
and  jalousied.  The  Tropic  of  Cancer  cuts  through  the 
San  Jose  valley  to  the  south.  The  town  and  the  land 
around  it  for  many  miles  are  a  dream  of  joy.  Here  the 
orange  groves  stretch  away  for  many  miles  on  every 
side,  bordered  with  rows  of  cocoanut  palms  which  re 
spond  to  the  slightest  touch  of  breeze,  and  wave  their 
fern-shaped  crowns.  In  the  morning,  when  the  sun  is 
rising  beyond  the  giant  mountains,  the  air  of  the  valley 
is  vibrant  with  the  songs  of  mocking  birds  and  Califor 
nia  magpies  of  many  hued  plumage.  Here  also,  in  the 
alluvian  depressions,  arborescent  ferns  with  wide- 
spreading  leaves,  tower  forty  feet  in  the  midst  of  tropi 
cal  trees,  whose  branches  are  festooned  with  many  va 
rieties  of  orchids  and  flowering  parasites  of  most  bril 
liant  hues. 

The  completion  of  the  Panama  canal  will  mean  much 
prosperity  to  the  west  coast,  for  a  railroad  will  then  be 
built  from  Magdalena  Bay  to  San  Diego,  Southern  Cali 
fornia,  connecting  with  the  Southern  Pacific  for  New 
Orleans,  Chicago  and  the  East.  The  west  coast  will  then 
probably  become  a  great  health  resort,  for  the  climate 
is  unsurpassed  and  chalybate  and  thermal  springs  are 
everywhere.  Some  far-seeing  Boston  capitalists,  antici 
pating  a  great  future  for  this  section  of  Lower  Califor 
nia,  have  purchased  the  Flores  estate,  427  miles  long  by 
sixteen  wide.  The  purchase  includes  harbor  rights  on 
Magdalena  Bay,  and  is  the  longest  coast  line  owned  by 
any  one  man  or  firm  in  the  world. 

The  population  of  Lower  California  is  about  25,000, 
principally  Mexicans  and  half-castes.  There  .are  600  or 
700  foreigners  engaged  in  mining,  and  some  Yaqui  and 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  93 

Mayo  Indians,  pearl  fishers  in  the  large  bay  of  Pechil- 
inque. 

To  me,  the  most  interesting  and  pathetically  attract 
ive  members  of  the  human  race  in  North  America  are  the 
melancholy  remnants  of  the  early  tribes  of  Lower  Cali 
fornia  withering  away  on  the  desert  lands  and  moiin- 
tain  ranges,  and  now  almost  extinct.  In  the  history  of  the 
human  race  we  have  no  record  of  any  tribe,  clan  or  fam 
ily  that  had  fallen  so  low  or  had  approached  as  near  as 
it  was  possible  for  human  beings  to  the  state  of  offal 
animals,  as  the  wretched  Cochimis,  or  " Digger  Indians," 
of  Lower  California.  The  Cochimis,  unlike  any  other 
family  or  tribe  of  American  Indians,  occupied  a  distinct 
position  of  their  own,  and,  indeed,  may  have  been  a  dis 
tinct  people.  Shut  off  from  the  mainland  by  the  Gulf  of 
Cortez  to  the  east,  and  impassable  deserts  on  the  north, 
they  were  isolated,  it  may  be,  for  thousands  of  years 
from  all  communication  with  other  aboriginal  tribes, 
and  until  the  coming  of  the  Spaniards  under  Otondo,  they 
knew  nothing  of  the  existence  of  any  other  people  ex 
cept,  perhaps,  the  coast  tribes  of  Sonora  and  Sinoloa. 
Their  language  and  tribal  dialects  bore  no  affinity  to  those 
of  the  northern  or  southern  nations.  It  is  doubtful,  in 
deed,  if  they  were  of  the  same  race,  for  their  customs, 
habits,  tribal  peculiarities  and  characteristics  allied 
them  rather  to  the  people  of  the  South  Pacific  Islands. 

Sir  William  Hunter  in  his  chapter  on  the  "Non- Aryan 
Baces,"  describes  the  Andamans,  or  "dog-faced  man- 
eaters,  "  as  a  fragment  of  the  human  race  which  had 
reached  the  lowest  depths  of  hopeless  degradation.  After 
the  Andamans,  he  classed  the  "Leaf -wearers, "  of  Wissa. 
Dr.  Kane,  the  Arctic  explorer,  thought  it  was  not  pos 
sible  for  human  beings  to  fall  lower  in  degeneracy  than 


y,:  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

the  fugitive  Eskimos,  the  "Ka-Kaaks,"  whom  he  met  at 
"Godsend  Ledge, "  where  his  ship  was  ice-locked  and 
where  fifty-seven  of  his  dogs  went  mad  from  cold  and 
died.  These  Indians  were  foul,  verminized  and  filthy, 
and  when  he  fed  them  raw  meat  and  blubber  ' i  each  slept 
after  eating,  his  raw  chunk  lying  beside  him  on  the  buf 
falo  skin,  and,  as  he  awoke,  his  first  act  was  to  eat  and 
the  next  to  sleep  again.  They  did  not  lie  down,  but  slum 
bered  away  in  a  sitting  posture,  with  the  head  resting 
on  the  breast." 

These  savages  were  compelled  by  the  intense  cold  of 
their  northern  home  to  cloth  themselves  and  construct 
some  sort  of  shelters,  and  even  the  Wissa  family,  or 
"leaf  wearers,"  of  Sir  William  Hunter,  yielded  to  an 
instinct  of  shame,  but  the  ' '  Digger  Indians ' '  roamed  en 
tirely  naked  and  built  no  temporary  or  permanent  shel 
ters.  Their  vermin  infested  hair  drooped  long  over  their 
faces  and  backs ;  they  were  tanned,  by  unnumbered  years 
of  sun  and  wind  exposure,  to  the  hue  of  West  Coast 
negroes,  and,  worst  of  all,  they  were  victims  of  porno 
graphic  and  sexual  indecencies  pitiful  in  their  destruct 
ive  results.  A  member  of  (Hondo's  expedition  and  col 
ony  of  1683,  writing  of  Lower  California,  says:  "We 
found  the  land  inhabited  by  brutish,  naked  people,  so- 
domitic,  drunken  and  besotted." 

The  noble  savage  of  Dryden  and  Cooper  is  all  right 
in  poetry  and  romance,  but  the  real  man,  when  you  meet 
him  and  know  him,  is  indeed  a  creature  to  be  pitied, 
against  whom  the  elements  have  conspired  and  with 
whom  circumstances  have  dealt  harshly.  God  deliver  us 
from  the  man  of  nature,  unrestrained  by  fear  of  punish 
ment,  unchecked  by  public  opinion,  by  law  or  order,  un 
tamed  by  social  amenities,  unawed  by  the  gospel  of  the 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  95 

hereafter.  The  nearer  we  come  to  the  man  who  has  no 
higher  law  than  his  own  will,  nor  knows  obedience  to  a 
higher  authority  than  himself,  the  nearer  we  come  to  a 
dangerous  animal  who  eats  raw  meat,  indecently  exposes 
himself,  loves  dirt,  hates  peace,  wallows  in  the  filth  of 
unrestrained  desire  and  kills  the  weaker  man  he/  does  not 
like  whenever  the  temptation  comes  and  the  opportunity 
is  present.  And  low  as  the  man  can  fall,  the  woman 
falls  lower.  "Corruptio  optimae  pessima" — the  corrup 
tion  of  the  best  is  ever  the  worst — and  all  nature  exposes 
nothing  to  the  pity  and  melancholy  wonder  of  man  more 
supremely  sad  and  heartrending  that  woman  reduced  to 
savagery. 

The  Jesuit  fathers,  who  established  sixteen  missions  in 
Lower  California,  beginning  in  1683,  sent  to  their  pro 
vincial  in  Mexico  City  from  time  to  time,  accurate  reports 
of  the  condition  of  the  tribes  and  the  progress  of  religion 
and  civilization  among  them.  From  the  letters  of  these 
great  priests  which,  in  places,  bear  upon  the  degeneracy 
and  pitiable  condition  of  the  Lower  California  Indians, 
and  the  appalling  degradation  to  which  it  is  possible,  un 
der  adverse  conditions,  for  human  beings  to  descend, 
we  obtain  all  the  information  extant  of  these  wretched 
tribes.  Many  of  these  letters  or  "Kelaciones,"  are  yet  in 
manuscript,  and  to  the  average  student  of  missionary 
history,  inaccessible.  The  historical  value  of  these  "Be- 
laciones"  has  of  course  been  long  understood  by  schol 
ars,  but,  to  the  general  reader,  even  to  the  educated  gen 
eral  reader,  they  were  and  are  somewhat  of  a  myth.  At 
a  very  early  period  their  value  was  recognized  by  that 
great  traveler  and  historian  Charlevoix,  who  in  1743 
wrote :  ' '  There  is  no  other  source  to  which  we  can  resort 
to  learn  the  progress  of  religion  among  the  Indians,  and 


96  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

to  know  the  tribes  *  *  *  of  the  Apostolic  labors  of  the 
missionaries  they  give  very  edifying  accounts. M  Some 
day,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  the  Mexican  government,  follow 
ing  the  example  of  the  Canadian  parliament,  which  in 
1858  printed  the  "Belations  of  the  Jesuits "  in  Canada, 
will  give  to  the  world  in  editional  form  the  letters  of  the 
Jesuits  in  Mexico  and  Lower  California.  However,  from 
the  books  compiled  from  these  letters,  such  as  those  of 
Fathers  Venagas,  Clavigero  and  Verre,  we  obtain  a  most 
pathetic  and  melancholy  narrative  of  the  woeful  state 
of  the  tribes  before  the  coming  of  the  fathers. 

Apart  from  the  divine  courage  and  enthusiasm  of  the 
Spanish  missionary  fathers,  nothing  has  excited  my  ad 
miration  more  than  the  learning  and  scholarship  of  the 
priests  sent  by  the  Catholic  church  for  the  evangelizing 
of  savage  tribes  and  barbarous  peoples.  From  an  off 
hand  study  of  the  brutish  and  deplorable  ignorance  of 
many  of  the  tribes,  it  would  be  quite  reasonable  to  as 
sume  that  men  of  simple  faith,  good  health  and  a  knowl 
edge  of  the  catechism  of  the  Council  of  Trent,  would  be 
best  adapted  for  the  redemption  of  a  people  "seated  in 
darkness  and  in  the  shadow  of  death. "  But  Eome,  with 
her  accumulated  wisdom  of  centuries  and  unparalleled 
experience  of  human  nature  under  adverse  conditions, 
trains  her  neophytes  destined  for  foreign  missions  to 
the  highest  possible  efficiency.  We  are  not,  then,  when 
acquainted  with  her  methods  of  education,  surprised  to 
find  among  her  priests,  living  amid  the  squalid  surround 
ings  of  savagery,  men  of  high  scholarship  and  special 
ists  in  departmental  science.  Of  these  was  Father  Sigis- 
mundo  Taravel,  a  pioneer  of  the  California  missions. 
In  1729  he  established  the  mission  of  St.  Rose,  near  the 
Bay  of  Palms.  Before  volunteering  for  the  California 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  97 

missions  lie  was  a  professor  in  the  University  of  Alcala, 
Spain,  and  when  he  entered  the  desert  and  mountain  sol 
itudes  of  this  peninsula  was  in  the  prime  of  his  young 
manhood.  He  was  dowered  with  exceptional  talents,  and 
when  commissioned  by  his  superior,  Father  Echivari,  to 
collect  material  for  the  history  of  the  land  and  its  inhabi 
tants,  he  brought  to  the  discharge  of  his  task  exceptional 
industry,  unflagging  patience  and  great  ability.  For 
twenty-three  years  he  remained  in  Lower  California,  in 
structing  and  Christianizing  the  tribes  around  the  Bay  of 
Palms  and  visiting  the  most  remote  corners  of  the  pe 
ninsula  in  quest  of  material  for  his  history.  He  took 
the  altitude  of  mountains,  determined  the  courses  of  un 
derground  rivers,  made  a  geodetic  survey  of  the  south 
ern  end  of  the  peninsula,  and  gave  names  to  many  of  the 
bays  and  inlets.  Broken  in  health,  he  retired  to  the  Jes 
uit  college  at  Guadalajara,  Mexico,  where  he  completed 
his  history  in  manuscript.  From  this  voluminous  work, 
Fathers  Clavigero  and  Vinegas  and  less  known  writers 
on  Lower  California,  drew  much  of  the  material  for  their 
publications. 

I  have  entered  upon  this  digression  that  you  may  un 
derstand  the  reliability  and  accuracy  of  the  information 
we  inherit  bearing  on  the  daily  life  and  habits  of  a  peo 
ple  which,  I  believe,  to  have  been  the  most  degraded 
known  to  history. 

There  are  certain  disgusting  details  entering  into  the 
social  life  and  habits  of  this  unhappy  and  abandoned 
people  which  I  dare  not  touch  upon.  Even  the  barbar 
ous  tribes  of  Sinaloa  and  Sonora,  from  their  privileged 
lands  and  hunting  grounds  across  the  gulf,  looked  down 
upon  the  half -starved  creatures,  and  held  them  in  detes- 


98  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

tation,  as  did  the  Puritans  the  wrecks  of  humanity  that 
occupied  the  soil  of  Massachusetts. 

The  Europeans  of  (Hondo's  time,  who  attempted,  in 
1683,  to  open  a  settlement  on  the  Peninsula,  were  aston 
ished  at  a  condition  of  savagery  lower  than  they  had  ever 
heard  of,  and  their  disgust  and  horror  with  the  land  and 
its  people  were  so  great  that  they  abandoned  their  inten 
tion  of  remaining  in  the  country. 

Powerless  from  the  awful  conditions  under  which  they 
were  compelled  to  support  existence,  knowing  nothing  of 
cultivation  of  any  kind,  doomed  to  imprisonment  in  a 
land  carrying  an  anathema  of  sterility  and  where  large 
game  had  become  extinct,  the  tribes  of  Lower  California, 
among  all  the  barbarous  and  savage  people  of  America, 
"trod  the  wine  press  of  the  fury  of  the  wrath  of  God,  the 
Almighty." 

The  greater  part  of  the  peninsula  at  the  time  of  the 
coming  of  the  fathers,  was  in  possession  of  the  Cochimis, 
the  Gualcuris  and  the  Pericuis,  who  occupied  the  south 
ern  part  and  some  of  the  adjacent  lands. 

They  were  a  long  haired,  wild-looking  people,  scorched 
into  negro  blackness,  naked  and  not  ashamed.  Morals, 
in  the  technical  sense,  they  had  none,  they  could  not  be 
charged  with  sin,  for  they  had  no  knowledge  of  the  law, 
and  therefore  they  could  commit  no  breach  of  the  law. 
They  bored  holes  in  the  ears,  lips  and  nose,  inserting  in 
the  openings  bones,  shells  or  sticks.  They  bore  only 
names  of  common  gender,  which  they  received  while  yet 
in  the  womb.  Without  fixed  abodes  they  roamed  the 
country  in  search  of  food,  supporting  life  on  snakes, 
roasted  grasshoppers  and  ants,  on  wild  fruit  and  roots 
dug  from  the  cacti  beds,  and  because  of  this  rooting  habit 
they  were  called  by  the  Spaniards  ' '  Cavadores ' ' — the  Dig- 


BY  PATH  AND   TRAIL.  99 

gers.  Here  is  what  Father  Ugarte  writes  of  the  things 
on  which  they  sustained  life:  "They  live  on  rats,  mice 
and  worms,  lizards  and  snakes,  bats,  grasshoppers  and 
crickets;  a  kind  of  harmless  green  caterpillar,  about  a 
finger  long,  on  roots  and  barks  and  an  abominable  white 
worm,  the  length  and  thickness  of  one's  thumb."  Father 
Clavigero  adds  they  never  washed  themselves,  and  that 
in  their  filthiness  they  surpassed  the  brutes.  Their  hair 
was  crawling  with  vermin,  and  their  stupidity  was  so 
dense  that  they  could  not  count  beyond  five,  and  this 
number  they  expressed  by  one  hand.  The  different 
tribes,  Father  Basgert  tells  us,  represented  by  no  means 
rational  beings,  but  resembled  far  more  herds  of  wild 
swine,  which  run  about  according  to  their  own  liking,  be 
ing  together  to-day  and  scattered  to-morrow,  till  they  meet 
again  by  accident  at  some  future  time.  They  had  no  mar 
riage  ceremony,  nor  any  word  in  their  language  to  express 
marriage.  Like  birds  and  beasts  they  paired  off  accord 
ing  to  fancy.  They  practiced  polygamy,  each  man  taking 
as  many  wives  as  would  attach  themselves  to  him,  they 
were  his  slaves  and  supported  him.  Their  forebears  had 
exterminated  or  driven  into  the  inaccessible  mountain 
canyons  the  larger  game  of  the  peninsula,  the  deer,  the 
antelope,  the  big-horn,  the  ibex.  They  tracked  the  flight 
of  buzzards,  with  greedy  eyes,  and  followed  to  share  with 
them  the  putrefying  carcasses  of  animals  dead  from  dis 
ease  or  killed  by  pumas  or  mountain  lions. 

When,  by  good  luck,  they  captured  a  hare  or  a  jack- 
rabbit,  they  attached  a  small  morsel  of  the  raw  and  bleed 
ing  flesh  to  a  fiber  cord  and,  after  swallowing  it,  drew  it 
out  after  a  few  minutes,  and  passed  the  partially  di 
gested  mass  to  another,  who  repeated  the  foul  act.  Yet 
they  were  not  cannibals,  and  in  abstaining  from  human 


100  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

flesh  offered  a  striking  contrast  to  the  Aztecs  of  Mexico 
City,  who,  fed  on  human  flesh,  cut  and  salted  the  bodies 
of  prisoners  captured  in  battle  and  sold  the  meat  at  the 
public  markets.  They  were  a  fierce  and  savage  nation, 
without  law,  tribal  rules  or  government  of  any  kind,  un 
ruly  and  brutal  in  their  passions,  mercilessly  cruel  to 
their  enemies,  were  more  gregarious  than  social  and  of  a 
cold  blooded  disposition  often  manifested  in  treachery, 
in  relentless  persecutions  and  in  assassinations.  Oton- 
do  's  colonists  charged  them  in  addition  with  asinine  stu 
pidity,  ingratitude,  inconstancy  and  irredeemable  lazi 
ness.  The  Jesuit  fathers  wrote  more  kindly  of  them, 
they  condoned  their  bestiality  and  shameless  licentious- 
enss  by  reason  of  their  squalid  surroundings  and  sordid 
conditions,  but  then  we  must  remember  that  from  the 
day  the  Jesuits  opened  their  first  mission  among  them, 
the  "Digger  Indians7'  became  their  spiritual  children 
and  wards  of  the  church.  This  was  the  land  and  these 
the  people  to  whom,  in  their  unexampled  abandonment 
and  unspeakable  degeneracy,  the  missionary  priests  of 
the  Society  of  Jesus  brought  the  message  of  salvation, 
the  hope  of  happiness  in  this  life  and  the  assurance  of  a 
resurrection  to  a  higher  and  better  life  beyond  the  grave. 
Now  it  may  be  asked  why  I  have  dwelt  at  such  length 
on  this  unpleasant  subject,  why  I  have  pictured  so  grue- 
somely,  even  if  truthfully,  the  disgusting  habits  of  a 
foul  and  filthy  people?  I  have  done  so  that  those  who 
now  read  this  work  may  learn  and  understand  what  man 
ner  of  men  they  were  who,  for  Christ's  sake  and  for 
the  sake  of  perishing  souls,  said  "  good-bye "  forever  to 
their  friends  at  home,  to  all  that  men  in  this  world  value 
and  prize,  to  the  teeming  vineyards  of  sunny  Spain,  to- 
ease,  comfort  and  the  delights  of  companionship  with  re-- 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  101 

fined  or  scholarly  minds,  and  doomed  themselves  volun 
tarily  to  the  horrors  of  hourly  association  with  revolting 
vice,  with  repellent  surroundings,  to  daily  fellowship 
with  filthy  and  unhospitable  hordes.  The  "Digger  In 
dian  "  was  a  man,  so  was  the  priest.  The  Digger  Indian 
had  descended  to  the  level,  and  in  some  instances  below 
the  level  of  the  brute ;  the  priest  rose  to  the  heights  of  a 
hero  and  to  the  plane  of  the  saint.  What  conspiracy  of 
accidents,  what  congeries  of  events,  what  causes  com 
bined  to  make  a  brute  of  one  and  a  civilized  and  an  hon 
orable  man  of  the  other?  Well,  unrestrained  passions, 
ungoverned  will,  unregulated  desires,  contempt  for  all 
law  human  and  divine  in  the  beginning  and  then  entire 
ignorance  of  it,  and  finally  well-nigh  desperate  condi 
tions  of  existence  and  almost  utter  destitution  and,  the  re- 
fore,  impossible  conditions  of  civilization,  made  the  Dig 
ger  Indian.  And  the  Jesuit  priest,  the  hero  and  the  saint? 
Ethnologically,  it  is  not  so  long  ago  since  the  ancestors 
of  the  priest  were  barbarians,  and  on  the  downward  road 
to  savagery.  When  Pope  Innocent  L,  early  in  the  fifth 
century,  sent  his  missionaries  to  civilize  and  preach  the 
doctrines  of  our  Divine  Lord  to  the  Spaniards  and  those 
of  the  Iberian  peninsula,  they  were,  as  we  learn  from 
the  letter  of  the  Pope  to  Decentius,  given  over  to  foul 
ness  and  the  worship  of  demons.  The  church  lifted  them 
out  of  their  degradation,  civilized  and  Christianized 
tEem  and  made  of  them  what  Voltaire  termed  ' i  an  heroic 
nation. "  The  same  church  with  her  consecrated  mis 
sionaries  was  leading  out  from  the  shadow  of  death  the 
Digger  Indians  and  would  have  made  a  civilized  and 
Christian  community  of  them  if  she  had  been  left  for 
fifty  years  in  undisturbed  possession  of  the  field. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE  JESUITS  AND  THE  DIGGEE  INDIANS. 

The  true  idea  of  an  effective  religion,  the  idea  which 
is  formulated  in  the  word  Christian,  is  that  it  should  not 
merely  be  fully  capable  of  adaptation  to  the  habits  of 
all  climates  and  natures,  but  that  in  each  locality  it  is 
able  to  meet  the  wants  of  all  conditions  of  human  life  and 
of  all  types  of  minds.  Our  divine  Lord  and  Master 
taught  the  highest  lessons  of  virtue  and  the  most  heroic 
and  has  exercised  so  deep  an  influence  on  human  souls, 
that  it  may  be  truly  said  his  active  life  of  three  and  one- 
half  years  has  done  more  to  regenerate  and  humanize 
our  race  than  all  the  disquisitions  of  philosophers  and 
all  the  discourses  and  writings  of  moralists  since  the 
world  began.  Among  the  believers  in  the  Divinity  of 
Christ,  and  more  especially  in  the  church  which  he  estab 
lished  to  perpetuate  his  doctrine  and  sacraments,  we 
naturally  look  to  find  men,  who  by  their  lives  and  con 
duct  furnish  us  examples  of  the  influence  on  their  souls 
of  the  grace  and  teaching  of  the  divine  Master.  But  par 
ticularly  do  we  expect  from  those  whom  Cicero  called 
divine  men  and  whom  we  honor  with  the  exalted  title  of 
priests  lessons  of  sublime  abnegation,  of  purity  of  life, 
and,  when  the  occasion  demands  it,  of  heroic  sacrifice. 
To  the  credit  of  the  Christian  religion  and  for  the  honor 
of  our  race  the  centuries  proclaim  since  the  resurrection 
of  our  Lord  the  sanctity  and  heroism  of  vast  numbers  of 
these  consecrated  men  who  enobled  their  generations  and 
died  confessors  and  martyrs.  Of  these  were  the  mem 
bers  of  the  missionary  orders  of  the  church  and  among 
them  were  many  of  the  order  established  by  Ignatius 


104  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

Loyola  for  the  conversion  of  the  heathen  and  the  sav 
age. 

The  Jesuit  fathers  on  the  American  missions  showed 
to  the  world  an  example  of  missionary  zeal,  a  sublime 
enthusiasm,  a  steadiness  of  perseverance,  of  suffering 
and  of  persecution  heroically  borne  with  a  hope  and 
resignation  which,  while  memory  lives,  will  encircle  their 
name  with  a  halo  of  glory.  "No  deeds,"  says  Cicero, 
"are  more  laudable  than  those  which  are  done  without 
ostentation  and  far  from  the  sight  of  men."  Buried  in 
the  solitude  of  great  wastes  or  amid  the  desolation  of 
towering  sierras,  away  from  the  temptations  of  vain 
glory,  they  become  dead  to  the  world  and  possessed 
their  souls  in  unalterable  peace.  "Maligners  may  taunt 
the  Jesuits  if  they  will,"  writes  Parkman,  "with  credu 
lity,  superstition  and  blind  enthusiasm,  but  slander  it 
self  cannot  accuse  them  of  hypocrisy  or  ambition." 

We  have  already  learned  something  of  the  awful  de 
gradation  of  the  tribes.  Allow  me  to  anticipate  the  seri 
ous  nature  of  the  struggle  the  missionaries  were  now  en 
gaged  in  by  an  extract  from  a  sketch  of  the  Sonora  mis 
sion,  written  by  one  then  laboring  among  the  tribes. 
14  The  disposition  of  the  Indians,"  writes  the  priest, 
"rests  on  four  foundations,  each  one  worse  than  the 
other,  and  they  are  ignorance,  ingratitude,  inconstancy 
and  laziness.  Their  ignorance  is  appalling  and  causes 
them  to  act  as  children.  Their  ingratitude  is  such  that 
whoever  wishes  to  do  them  good,  must  arm  himself  with 
the  firm  resolution  of  looking  to  God  for  his  reward,  for 
should  he  expect  gratitude  from  them  he  is  sure  to  meet 
with  disappointment.  Their  laziness  and  horror  of  all 
kind  of  work,  is  so  great  that  neither  exhortation,  nor 
prayers,  nor  the  threat  of  punishment  are  sufficient  to 


BY  PATH  AND  TEAIL.  105 

prevail  upon  them  to  procure  the  necessaries  of  life  by 
tilling  their  own  lands;  their  inconstancy  and  want  of 
resolution  is  heart-breaking." 

And  now  it  may  interest  my  readers  to  be  informed 
of  the  methods  and  the  discipline  of  reclamation  fol 
lowed  by  the  missionary  fathers  when  dealing  with  sav 
ages  either  in  northern  Canada  or  on  the  shores  of  the 
Pacific.  Religious  and  moral  teaching  naturally  under 
laid  their  system.  They  attached  supreme  importance 
to  oral  teaching  and  explanations  of  the  doctrines  of  the 
church,  iterating,  reiterating  and  repeating  till  they 
were  satisfied  their  instructions  had  penetrated  into  the 
obtuse  brains  of  their  swarthy  hearers,  lodged  there 
and  were  partially,  at  least,  understood.  In  the  begin 
ning  and  to  attract  them  to  the  divine  offices  and  instruc 
tions  they  fed  them  after  the  services  were  over.  They 
were  dealing  with  "bearded  children, "  as  one  of  the 
fathers  wrote  and  as  there  was  only  a  child 's  brain 
in  a  man's  body  they  were  compelled  to  appeal  to  their 
imagination,  their  emotions  and  affections  rather  than 
to  their  intellects.  Having  in  a  measure  won  their  good 
will  they  began  to  teach  the  children,  singing,  reading 
and  writing.  They  composed  catechisms  in  the  native 
dialects,  insisted  on  the  children  memorizing  the  chap 
ters  which  the  fathers  with  heroic  patience  explained 
and  unfolded. 

They  now  established  a  children's  choir,  introduced 
into  the  services  lights,  incense,  processions,  genuflex 
ions,  beautiful  vestments,  the  use  of  banners  and  flowers 
for  the  purpose  of  decoration.  They  brought  from  Mex^ 
ico,  sacred  paintings  and  the  stations  of  the  cross  which 
they  used  not  alone  as  incentives  to  devotion  but  as  ob 
ject  lessons  in  religion.  The  rude  and  simple  chapels 


106  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

which  they  built  with  the  help  of  their  newly  made  con 
verts  were  not  only  temples  where  the  holy  sacrifice  was 
offered  and  prayers  said,  but  they  became  consecrated 
kindergartens  where  the  altar,  the  crucifix,  the  way  of 
the  cross  and  the  painting  of  the  Last  Judgment  taught 
their  own  lessons.  By  pictures,  by  music,  by  art  and 
song,  and  symbolic  representations,  by  patience  and  af 
fection  they  developed  the  stupid  minds  and  won  over 
the  callous  hearts  of  these  benighted  children  of  the 
desert.  The  fathers  in  time  choose  from  their  converts 
assistants  known  as  Temastranes,  who  taught  catechism 
to  the  children,  acted  as  sacristans  and  explained  from 
time  to  time  the  rudiments  of  religion  to  the  pagan  In 
dians.  They  appointed  for  every  congregation  a  choir 
master,  known  as  the  maestro,  who  could  read  and  write, 
was  comissioned  to  lead  the  singers,  male  and  female, 
and  teach  others  to  play  on  musical  instruments.  In  time 
they  became  enamored  with  their  work  and  the  progress 
they  were  making,  so  much  so  indeed  that  one  of  the 
fathers  writes:  "It  is  wonderful  how  these  Indians, 
who  can  neither  read  nor  write,  learn  and  retain  two, 
three  or  four  different  masses,  psalms,  chants  of  the  of 
fice  of  the  dead,  chants  for  Holy  Week,  vespers  for  festi 
vals,  etc."  Then  when  the  fathers  succeeded  in  gather 
ing  then}  into  communities  and  the  children,  under  their 
fostering  care,  had  grown  into  young  men  and  women, 
they  taught  them  different  mechanical  trades  and  many 
of  the  Indians  became  tailors,  carpenters,  tillers  of  the 
soil,  blacksmiths,  butchers,  stone  cutters  and  masons.  "I 
know,"  writes  the  author  of  the  "Budo  Ensayo,"  "sev 
eral  Opates  and  Eudebes  who  can  work  at  all  these 
trades  and  who  now  play  on  musical  instruments  with 
no  little  skill."  It  has  always  taken  centuries  to  graft 


BY  PATH  AND  TEAIL.  107 

upon  savagery  anything  approaching  a  high  civilization, 
yet  in  thirty  years  these  devout  priests  had  changed 
these  children  of  the  desert  and  the  mountain  from  eat 
ers  of  raw  meat,  stone  tool  users  and  grinders  of  acorn 
nieal  in  rock  bowls  to  tillers  of  the  soil,  weavers  of  cloth, 
workers  in  metal,  players  on  musical  instruments  and 
singers  of  sacred  hymns. 

The  consecrated  man  who  entered  upon  the  territory 
of  a  savage  tribe  to  make  to  the  owners  of  the  soil  a 
proclamation  of  the  will  of  Jesus  Christ,  knew  from  the 
history  of  the  past  that  he  might  be  murdered  while  de 
livering  his  message.  His  mission  demanded  from  him 
unflinching  courage,  good  health,  a  living  consciousness 
that  the  eye  of  God  was  upon  him;  demanded,  in  fact, 
that  he  clothe  himself  in  the  garments  of  the  hero  and 
the  martyr.  We  must  remember  that  by  nature  the 
missionaries  were  men  like  others  of  our  race;  swayed 
by  the  same  impulses;  animated  by  human  hopes;  agi 
tated  by  the  same  fears;  subject  to  the  same  passions. 
But  the  practice  of  daily  self-denial  and  self-sacrifice; 
the  crucifixion  of  the  flesh  with  all  its  earthly  appetites 
and  desires;  indifference  to  worldly  honors  and  worldly 
rewards,  contempt  for  the  vanities  of  society,  a  "life  of 
hourly  intercourse  with  heaven,  and  a  supreme  purity  of 
intention  raised  them  in  time  unto  the  plane  of  the  super 
natural.  Outside  of  the  immediate  companions  of  their 
order  they  were  unknown,  they  coveted  obscurity  and 
were  satisfied  to  be  forgotten  of  men.  "It  is  possible," 
writes  Marcus  Aurelius,  "at  once  to  be  a  divine  man,  yet 
a  man  unknown  to  all  the  world." 

It  is  impossible  to  study  their  lives  and  not  feel  that 
they  were  men  eminently  holy  and  of  tender  conscience, 
men  acting  under  the  abiding  sense  of  the  presence  and 
omniscience  of  God,  living  in  his  holy  fear  and  walking 


108  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

in  his  ways.  "If  ye  labor  only  to  please  men,  ye  are 
fallen  from  your  high  estate, "  wrote  Francis  Xavier  to 
the  members  of  the  order  in  Portugal. 

Preaching  the  precepts  of  self-denial  to  men  and 
women  given  over  to  sensual  indulgence,  to  carnal 
pleasures,  and  with  whom  freedom  to  think  and  act  as 
they  pleased  was  an  immemorial  right,  these  men  of  God 
came  as  enemies  making  war  on  the  dearest  traditions 
of  the  family  and  the  established  customs  and  habits  of 
the  teibe. 

From  the  cradle  to  the  grave,  this  religion  of  the 
strangers  forced  on  their  savage  natures  a  new  law  of 
conduct,  new  habits,  new  conceptions  of  action  and  of 
life.  It  entered  above  all  into  that  sphere  within  which 
the  individual  will  of  the  savage  man  had  been  till  now 
supreme,  the  sphere  of  his  own  hearth;  it  curtailed  his 
power  over  his  wife  and  child ;  it  forbade  infanticide,  the 
possession  of  more  than  one  woman  and  commanded  the 
abiding  with  that  woman  and  with  her  alone.  It  chal 
lenged  almost  every  social  act;  it  denied  to  the  bravp 
cruelty  to  an  enemy  and  the  right  to  torture  his  foe;  it 
made  war  on  his  very  thoughts  if  they  were  foul.  It  held 
up  gluttony  and  drunkenness,  to  which  they  were  wedded 
and  which  alone  made  life  worth  living,  as  abominable 
vices;  it  interfered  with  the  unlawful  gratification  of 
sexual  desire  and  condemned  killing  for  revenge  or  gain 
under  threat  of  eternal  fire.  It  claimed  to  control  every 
circumstance  of  life  and  imposed  abstinences  and  fasts 
on  men,  at  all  times,  ravenous  for  food  and  drink. 

When  reading  of  the  martyrdom  of  many  of  these 
heroic  priests  our  wonder  is,  not  that  forty-seven  of 
them  were  done  to  death  when  delivering  the  message 
of  the  Crucified  Christ,  but  that  any  one  of  them  escaped 
the  horrors  of  the  torch  or  the  scalping  knife. 


CHAPTEE  XIII. 

THE  VACA  DE  LUMBEE. 

The  morning  I  left  Santa  Cruz  for  the  historic  town 
of  Loretto  I  went  to  assist  at  mass  in  the  only  church  in 
the  village.  It  was  as  early  as  6  o'clock  and  I  was  sur 
prised  and  edified  to  see  the  number  of  Mexicans  and 
Mexican  half-bloods  who  were  waiting  for  the  service  to 
begin.  After  mass,  as  I  was  passing  and  repassing,  ex 
amining  the  windows  and  certain  peculiarities  of  the 
architecture,  I  was  struck  with  the  singular  appearance 
of  a  half -breed  woman  who  was  kneeling  by  one  of  the 
pillars,  with  a  number  of  children  also  kneeling  beside 
her ;  a  group  like  which  we  see  carved  in  marble  on  some 
of  the  ancient  tombs  of  Europe.  While  I  was  studying 
from  a  respectful  distance  their  features  and  facial  ex 
pressions,  the  Mexican  priest  who  had  offered  up  the 
Holy  Sacrifice  came  out  from  the  sanctuary  and  in  a  sub 
dued  voice  bade  me  good  morning.  After  an  interchange 
of  courtesies  I  asked  him, 

"Why  is  this  poor  woman  crouching  there  with  her 
children  V9 

He  answered,  just  as  if  it  were  an  every  day  occur 
rence  : 

"Some  poor  woman,  I  suppose,  who  has  something  to 
ask  of  God. " 

Then  observing  and  turning  to  me  he  said : 

"She  is  the  wife  of  a  Mason  who  was  hurt  by  a  fall 
two  or  three  days  ago,  the  family  is  quite  destitute 
and  no  doubt  they  have  come  to  ask  help  of  God. ' '  With 
out  interrupting  her  devotions,  I  laid  down  by  the  base 


110  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

of  the  pillar  what  was  a  trifle  to  me,  but  a  god-send  to 
her  and  her  family;  upon  which,  without  thanking  me 
except  by  a  courteous  inclination  of  the  head,  she  went 
up  to  the  high  altar,  followed  by  her  children  to  return 
thanks  to  God.  Now  all  'this  might  be  very  ignorant  re 
ligion  to  an  American  Protestant,  but  to  me  it  was  true 
religion,  and,  what  was  more,  an  example  of  sincere  faith. 
She  trusted  that  God  would  supply  what  she  wanted,  she 
knew  that  he  had  said  about  his  house  being  the  house  of 
prayer  and  she  came  to  that  house  in  faith  to  ask  him 
for  help  in  her  troubles;  and  when  she  got  what  she 
wanted  she  evidently  believed  that  her  prayer  had  been 
heard,  and  therefore  did  not  thank  me,  whom  she  con 
sidered  merely  the  instrument,  but  God  who  had  sent 
me. 

My  companion  and  guide  from  the  town  of  Jesus 
Maria  was  a  quiet,  honest  representative  of  the  Mexican 
half-breeds  to  be  met  with  in  almost  every  village  of  this 
peninsula. 

1 1  Tell  me,  Ignacio, ' '  I  said  to  him  in  a  solemn  tone,  late 
in  the  evening  when  we  were  coming  out  of  an  ugly  ra 
vine,  "tell  me  of  this  La  Llorona  who  haunts  the  moun 
tain  paths  and  the  lonely  roads  leading  to  the  towns.,, 
is  she  worse  than  the  Vaca  de  Lumbre,  the  gleaming  cow, 
that  at  midnight  suddenly  appears  on  the  Plaza  del  Ig- 
lesia  and  after  a  moment's  pause  bounds  forward,  and 
with  streams  of  fire  and  flame  flowing  from  her  eyes  and 
nostrils,  rushes  like  a  blazing  whirlwind  through  the 
village. ' ' 

"Ah,  senor,  she  is  worse,  indeed  she  is  worse  than 
the  fiery  cow,  for  it  is  known  to  everybody  that  while  the 
vaca  is  terrible  to  look  at,  and  on  a  dark  night  it  is  aw 
ful,  she  never  does  harm  to  any  one.  The  little  children, 


BY  PATH  AND  TEAIL.  Ill 

too,  are  all  in  bed  and  asleep,  when  the  Vaca  de  Lumbre 
appears,  and  it  is  only  us  grown  people  that  see  her  and 
that  not  often.  But  the  weeping  woman  indeed  is  harm 
ful  ;  it  is  well,  senor,  that  we  all  know  her  when  she  ap 
pears,  and  we  are  so  afraid  of  her  that  no  one  will  say 
yes  or  no  to  her  when  she  speaks,  and  it  is  well.  Many 
queer  things  and  many  evil  spirits,  it  is  known  to  us  all, 
are  around  at  night  and  they  are  angry,  when  on  dark 
nights  there  is  thunder  and  rain  and  lightning,  but  the 
Wailing  Woman  is  the  worst  of  all  of  them.  Sometimes, 
sir,  she  is  out  of  her  head  and  is  running,  her  hair 
streaming  after  her  and  she  is  tossing  her  hands  above 
her  head  and  shrieking  the  names  of  her  lost  children 
Eita  and  Anita.  But  when  you  meet  her  some  other  time 
she  looks  like  an  honest  woman,  only  different,  for  her 
dress  is  white  and  the  reboso  with  which  she  covers  her 
head  is  white,  too.  Indeed,  anybody  might  speak  back 
to  her  then  and  offer  to  help  her  to  find  her  children,  but 
whoever  does  speak  to  her  drops  dead.  Yes,  indeed,  sir, 
only  one  man,  Diego  Boula,  who  years  afterward  died  in 
His  bed,  was  the  only  one  who  ever  answered  her  and 
lived.  Diego,  you  must  know,  was  a  loco,  a  fool,  and  he 
met  her  one  night  when  he  was  crossing  the  Plazuela 
San  Pablo.  She  asked  him  what  he  did  with  Eita  and 
Anita.  And  he  looked  stupid  at  her  and  said  he  wanted 
something  to  eat,  for  he  was  always  hungry,  this  Diego. 
Then  sne  took  a  good  look  at  him  and  then  threw  back 
her  white  reboso  and  Diego  saw  a  wormy,  grinning  skull, 
and  blue  little  balls  of  fire  for  eyes.  Then  she  brought 
her  skull  n^ear  to  his  face  and  opened  her  fleshless  jaws 
and  blew  into  Diego's  face  a  breath  so  icy  cold  that  he 
dropped  down  like  a  dead  man.  But,  senor,  a  fool's  luck 
saved  him  and  when  he  was  found  in  the  morning,  he 


112  BY  PATH  AND  TBAIL. 

was  recovering.  It  is  said  that  this  ice  cold  breath  of 
hers,  freezes  into  death  who  ever  feels  it.  Then  after 
the  person  falls  dead,  she  rushes  onward  again,  shriek 
ing  for  her  lost  ones,  but  the  one  who  speaks  to  her  is 
found  the  next  morning  dead,  and  on  his  face  and  in  his 
wide  open  eyes  there  is  a  look  of  awful  horror. 

Did  I  ever  meet  her?  God  forbid,  but  I  heard  her 
shrieks  and  wailings  and  the  patter  of  her  feet,  as  she 
ran,  on  the  cobblestones  of  the  Calle  de  San  Esteban." 

As  we  drew  near  to  the  inland  village  where  I  in 
tended  to  put  up  for  the  night  the  country  bore  all  the 
appearance  of  having  lately  been  swept  by  a  tornado  of 
wind  and  rain.  A  swirling  mass  of  water  must  have 
rioted  over  the  lowlands,  for  rocks,  trees  and  bowlders 
lay  everywhere  in  confusion  and  encumbered  the  roads. 
Many  of  the  fruit  trees  were  uprooted,  houses  unroofed 
and  outbuildings  dismantled.  Sure  enough  when  we  en 
tered  the  town  it  bore  all  the  marks  of  cyclonic  wrath. 
With  difficulty  we  obtained  accommodations  for  the 
night.  When  I  strolled  out  early  next  morning  to  take  a 
look  at  the  town  and  the  damage  done  by  the  storm,  the 
entire  population  apparently,  men,  women  and  children 
were  gathered  around  their  church  which  had  been  blown 
down  by  the  cyclone.  Some  were  chipping  stones,  some 
carrying  lime,  some  mixing  mortar,  some  pulling  down 
the  .shaken  walls,  some  splitting  shingles  for  the  roof, 
some  strengthening  the  sprung  beams.  Everybody  was 
busy  about  the  church  and,  seemingly,  not  one  was  en 
gaged  about  any  of  the  houses.  A  sudden  shower  drove 
me  into  a  protected  part  of  the  building  for  shelter,  and 
I  got  into  conversation  with  a  man  who  turned  out  to  be 
the  priest,  but  not  being  quite  as  good  a  bricklayer  as 
he  was  a  theologian,  he  was  then  serving  as  hodman  to 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  113 

his  own  clerk,  or  sexton,  the  mason  of  the  village.  Not 
knowing  at  the  time  that  I  was  addressing  the  cura  or 
parish  priest,  I  asked  him  how  all  these  people  were 
paid. 

1 ' Paid?"  said  the  reverend  hodman,  "why,  they  a]T 
belong  to  this  parish. " 

"Yes,"  I  replied,  "but  how  are  they  paid? — I  mean," 
continued  I,  hesitating  and  turning  over  in  my  mind 
what  was  Spanish  for  church  rates  or  dues,  "how  do  you 
raise  the  money  to  pay  all  these  people  their  day's 
wages  1 ' ' 

The  hodcarrier  laughed.  "Why,"  he  spoke  back,  and 
I  now  from  his  face  and  accent  began  to  suspect  he  was 
somebody,  "why,  you  do  not  pay  people  for  doing  their 
own  work.  It  is  the  house  of  God,  their  own  church 
which  they  are  repairing.  It  is  mine,  it's  theirs,  it  is  their 
children's.  Until  the  church  is  ready  we  have  no  place  to 
assemble  to  pray  to  God  and  publicly  to  offer  up  to  him 
the  holy  sacrifice.  There  will  be  no  work  done  by  us  till 
we  have  repaired  God's  temple,  our  own  church."  Who 
was  it  who  wrote :  "0,  for  the  touch  of  a  vanished  hand, 
and  the  sound  of  the  voice  that  is  still."  And  0  for  the 
simple  piety  and  child-like  faith  of  the  days  of  old.  In 
the  presence  of  this  example  of  rugged  faith  and  zeal 
for  the  house  of  God  on  the  part  of  this  priest  and  his 
flock  I  called  back  to  my  mind  the  ages  of  faith  and  the 
sublime  heroism  and  devotion  of  the  early  Christians. 
Beyond  a  doubt  the  church  was  theirs.  Not  a  day  did 
these  simple  people  go  to  their  work  till  they  had  assisted 
at  the  mass  offered  up  by  the  priest  who  was  now,  as  a 
hodman,  helping  in  the  rebuilding  of  their  temple.  Not  a 
time  did  any  of  them  start  out  on  a  long  journey  withouf 
first  receiving  holy  communion  from  the  hands  of  this 


114  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

man  of  God.  Yes,  and  many  a  time,  too,  when  sickness 
entered  the  home  or  when  trouble  came  to  some  one  of 
the  family,  might  you  see  an  anxious  wife  or  trembling 
mother  kneeling  before  the  tabernacle,  who  had  stolen 
away  from  the  noise  and  distractions  of  home,  and  had 
come  unto  the  altar  of  God  to  pray  for  herself  and  her 
loved  ones.  To  these  honest  souls  their  church  was  as 
necessary  as  their  sleeping  rooms  or  their  kitchens  and 
was  used  as  much.  When  it  was  blown  down  they  felt 
the  want  of  it  as  much  as  they  did  that  of  their  own 
houses.  The  church  was  always  open  and  they  came  and 
went  when  and  as  often  as  they  liked.  Surely  it  was 
their  church  and  they  made  good  use  of  it. 

I  remember  well  the  day  I  came  down  from  the  Sier- 
etta  mountains  and  was  passing  on  foot  through  the  little 
city  of  Aguas  Coloradas,  the  church  of  which  was  well 
worth  seeing.  I  had  my  camera  and  field  glasses  hang 
ing  from  my  shoulders,  some  few  samples  in  a  canvas 
bag,  was  wearing  a  suit  of  rough  khaki  and  was  not  alto 
gether  the  figure  for  the  inside  of  a  church. 

"What  shall  I  do  with  these  things? "  I  said  to  my 
guide. 

"Put  them  down  here  on  the  church  steps/'  said  he. 

Now  these  church  steps  projected  into  the  market 
place,  which  at  that  time  was  full  of  all  sorts  of  rough- 
looking  people.  I  laughed  and  said,  <TI  had  much  rather 
not  put  such  a  temptation  in  the  way  of  Mexican  hon 
esty." 

"Well,"  answered  my  guide,  "there  is  no  doubt  that 
the  people  of  Aguas  Coloradas  are  the  greatest  rogues 
unhung"  (he  belonged  himself  to  a  neighboring  parish, 
and  like  all  members  of  little  communities  was  narrow 
enough  to  be  jealous  of  his  neighbor's  prosperity), 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  115 

"your  excellency  is  perfectly  right,  they  are  the  great 
est  rogues  unhung.  But  they  are  not  so  bad  as  to  steal 
from  God. ' '  I  put  my  things  on  the  steps  and  after  the 
lapse  of  an  hour  I  found  them,  and  along  with  them  some 
eight  or  ten  baskets  of  fruit  and  vegetables,  which  the 
market  people  had  left  there  while  they  went  in  to  say 
their  prayers,  all  of  which  though  looking  very  tempting, 
though  entirely  unguarded,  except  by  the  unseen  pres 
ence  of  God,  were  as  safe  as  if  they  had  been  under  lock 
and  key.  Is  there  a  church  in  any  city  of  America  whose 
sanctity  would  protect  day  and  night  articles  left  ex 
posed  before  its  door?  If  not,  why  not? 

WONDERFUL   CRUCIFIX. 

Very  much  to  my  surprise  I  discovered  in  the  sacristy 
of  the  quaint  little  church  of  this  primitive  village  a  du 
plicate  of  Julian  Garces'  famous  copy  on  glass  of  "The 
Dead  Christ. "  Garces  painting  from  the  original'hangs 
in  the  baptistry  of  an  ancient  church  on  the  Calle  San 
Pablo,  Mexico  City,  and  is  never  exhibited  to  visitors 
save  on  request.  It  is  a  wonderful  painting  on  glass, 
thrilling  in  its  awful  realism  and  impossible,  once  seen, 
ever  to  be  forgotten. 

It  was  copied  many  years  ago  by  the  Dominican 
painter,  Julian  Garces,  from  the  original  painting  on 
wood,  carried  to  Spain,  when  the  religious  orders  were 
suppressed  by  the  Mexican  government  in  1829.  This 
wonderful  painting  on  wood  is  now  preserved  in  the  con 
vent  of  the  discalced  Order  of  St.  Francis,  Bilboa,  Spain. 
It  is  known  as  the  crucifix  of  the  devil,  and  intimately 
associated  with  it  is  a  curious  and  touching  legend. 

Early  in  the  seventeenth  century  Mexico  City  was  the 
Paris  of  the  Latin- American  world.  It  possessed  great 


116  BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL. 

wealth,  for  the  mines  of  Mexico  were  literally  pouring 
out  silver.  Its  reputation  for  gaiety,  for  the  beauty  and 
vivacity  of  its  senoritas,  for  its  variety^  of  amusements 
and  for  the  splendor  of  its  climate,  attracted  to  its  hos 
pitable  clubs  many  of  the  rollicking  and  adventurous 
youth  of  Spain.  Among  them  was  a  young  man  of  noble 
birth,  who  at  once  flung  himself  into  the  whirlpool  of 
dissipation  that  eddied  in  the  flowing  river  of  fashion 
able  amusements.  In  a  few  years  he  wasted  his  patri 
mony  in  a  fast  life  and  in  wild  debauchery.  Utterly 
ruined  in  pocket  and  in  credit,  he  determined  to  end  it  all 
in  suicide.  He  was  returning  from  the  Spanish  casino, 
after  losing  heavily  at  a  game  of  chance,  when  the 
thought  of  self-destruction  possessed  him.  He  was  re 
volving  in  his  mind  the  easiest  way  leading  from  earth — 
to  where — "To  hell!"  he  muttered.  Then  he  entered 
upon  another  line  of  thought.  He  had  read  and  heard  of 
men  in  desperate  circumstances  asking  and  receiving 
help  from  the  devil. 

"I'll  be  damned  anyhow, "  he  argued  with  himself , 
"and  I  may  as  well  have  a  few  more  years  on  earth  be 
fore  going  down  into  the  pit."  Much  to  his  surprise, 
when  he  entered  his  chambers  he  found  them  lighted  up 
and  a  stranger  awaiting  him.  The  man  who  rose  to  greet 
him  was  in  simple  citizen's  dress,  and  uncommonly  like 
one  of  those  curb  brokers  who  are  so  numerous  in  our 
own  day.  "I  understand,  sir,"  said  the  stranger,  "that 
you  wish  my  services." 

"Who  are  you?"  asked  the  Spaniard. 

"I  am  the  party  who,  many  hundreds  of  years  agor 
said  to  the  founder  of  your  religion:  "All  these  will  I 
give  thee,  if,  falling  down,  thou  wilt  adore  me." 

"The  Devil?" 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  117 

"The  same,  at  your  service." 

A  bargain  was  quickly  made.  In  exchange  for  his  soul, 
by  a  document  to  be  duly  signed  and  delivered,  the  prodi 
gal  was  to  receive  more  money  than  was  necessary  to  re 
establish  his  fortune;  and  to  enjoy  until  the  dissolution 
of  his  natural  body,  all  that  he  desired,  all  that  earth 
could  offer  him;  sensual  delight,  influence,  a  distin 
guished  career  in  society,  the  intoxication  of  power,  in 
short  all  that  gold  could  purchase  and  secure.  However, 
the  Spanird  was  no  fool,  and  before  he  attached  his  sig 
nature  to  the  fatal  contract,  he  wished  to  be  satisfied 
that  he  was  face  to  face  with  the  Master  of  Hell,  the 
Eebel  Lucifer.  "Before  I  sign  this  parchment,  may  I 
ask  you  a  few  questions  ?" 

"Certainly,"  replied  Satan. 

"Well,  since  you  are  Lucifer,  how  long  have  you  dealt 
with  the  children  of  Adam?" 

i  '  Since  that  day  I  laughed  at  God,  when  in  the  Garden 
of  Eden,  I  seduced  Eve." 

i  i  Then  you  must  have  met  in  the  waning  years  of  His 
mortal  life  Him  whom  men  style  Christ?" 

"I  followed  Him  about  for  three  years,  and  for  the 
defeats  He  inflicted  on  my  friends  and  for  the  insults  He 
offered  to  me  I  gave  Him  blow  for  blow.  ' ' 

"Were  you  present  when  He  hung  on  the  Cross  of  Cal 
vary,  between  a  murderer  and  a  thief,  and  did  you  wit 
ness  his  awful  agony  and  ignominious  death?" 

"  I  was,  of  all  the  crowd  that  mocked  Him  and  laughed 
at  Him  when  He  hung  on  the  wood,  the  most  pleased  wit 
ness.  Why,  I  inspired  the  fools  who  nailed  Him  to  the 
wood.  It  was  I  who  tempted  Judas,  the  Iscariot,  to  be 
tray  Him;  I  inspired  the  Hebrew  priests  to  insult  Him, 
another  to  spit  upon  Him,  and  my  friend  Pilate,  who  now 
occupies  a  conspicuous  place  in  my  kingdom,  to  scourge 


118  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

Him,  and  fling  Him  to  the  mob.  Why,  only  for  me,  the 
fools  would  not  have  whipped  Him,  pressed  the  crown  on 
His  head,  put  a  reed  in  His  hand  for  a  scepter  and  a  scar 
let  cloak  on  his  bleeding  shoulders  and,  amid  laughter 
and  insult,  made  a  mock  king  of  Him. 

"You  remember  His  features,  the  expression  on  His 
face  when  He  hung  on  the  cross  and  cried  aloud  to  His 
Father :  * '  My  God,  My  God,  hast  Thou  abandoned  me ! ' ' 
questioned  the  Spaniard. 

"As  if  His  vile  death  happened  yesterday. 

"Could  you  and  will  you  paint  for  me  the  face,  and 
the  expression  on  the  face  as  you  saw  them  immediately 
before  He  said:  'All  is  consummated/  and  when  dark 
ness  was  falling  on  Calvary  and  Jerusalem? " 

"I  can  and  will. " 

"Well,  then,  do  I  beseech  you,  before  I  sign  our  com 
pact.  Here  is  the  brush  and  here  the  palette. ' ' 

Lucifer  took  the  brush  and  paints,  and  when  in  a  few 
moments  he  handed  them  back  the  face  of  Jesus  Christ 
stood  out  upon  an  ebony  background.  It  was  a  face  full 
of  tenderness,  of  infinite  pathos,  of  unspeakable  pity,  of 
boundless  compassion;  but  on  it,  deeply  graven  in  the 
flesh,  were  lines  of  awful  suffering,  the  seamings  of  sor 
row  and  sustained  agony.  The  Spaniard,  as  he  gazed 
upon  the  "Santo  Bostro,"  the  Divine  Face,  trembled  as 
trembles  the  man  to  whom  the  dead  speaks.  The  eyes  of 
the  Holy  Face  looked  into  his  own;  he  was  standing  be 
fore  a  Christ  that  was  not  yet  dead,  but  whose  body  lay 
limp,  and  from  which  the  blood  was  pouring  from  a  gash 
in  the  side  and  trickling  from  wounds  in  the  head  and 
hands.  From  out  the  closing  lids,  the  eyes,  glazed  with 
approaching  death,  looked  down  upon  him  in  sorrow  and 
infinite  pity.  The  face  and  figure  were  so  heart-rending 


BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL.  119 

in  their  terrible  realism,  the  look  of  the  agonized  Cruci 
fied  so  appealing  and  so  full  of  love  that  tears  of  sym 
pathy  welled  from  the  eyes  of  the  libertine.  Then  before, 
and  hiding  the  face  of  the  Christ,  he  saw  the  face  of  his 
mother,  and  the  eyes  that  looked  their  last  upon  him  when 
she  lay  upon  her  bed  of  death  in  their  home  in  Madrid. 
Eushing  past  his  tempter,  the  young  Castilian  flung  him 
self  at  the  feet  of  the  Christ  and  cried  aloud:  " Jesus, 
son  of  David,  have  mercy  on  me."  When,  sobbing  and 
broken-hearted,  he  rose  erect  he  was  alone  with  the  dead 
Christ  and  the  unsigned  compact. 


JULIAN  GAUGES'  COPY. 


In  Garces'  painting  on  glass,  the  dying  Christ  stands 
out  in  full  relief  with  no  perspective.  Behind  the  cross 
all  is  darkness  save  alone  a  thread  of  lightning,  snake- 
like  and  forked.  Over  Calvary  the  sky  is  lurid  and  of  a 
dull  red,  whose  fiery  hue  in  portentous,  lugubrious  and 
awe-inspiring.  The  body  of  the  dying  Savior,  the  little 
board  above  the  cross,  with  its  prophetic  inscription: 
"  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  King  of  the  Jews ;"  and  parts  of  the 
cross  which  the  Divine  Body  did  not  cover,  alone  occupy 
space.  Beyond  and  around  them  nothing,  only  the  black 
ness  of  ebon  darkness.  Save  the  ribbon  of  snake-like 
lightning  coming  out  of  and  piercing  the  impenetrable 
darkness,  there  is  nothing;  not  a  ray  of  light  anywhere, 
no  mark  of  a  horizon,  naught  but  the  body  of  the  Man- 
God,  the  gibbet  and — night,  moonless  and  starless.  But 
the  isolation  of  the  Figure  on  the  lone  Cross,  the  pitiable 
solitude  encompassing  the  Crucified,  the  blood  oozing 
from  the  frayed  wound  and  trickling  down  the  pallid 
flesh,  and  the  Divine  Face  from  which  expression,  anima 
tion  and  life  itself  are  lingeringly  departing,  appeal  to 


120  BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL. 

the  heart  and  the  imagination,  and  we  are  overwhelmed 
with  pity  and  sympathy. 

If  we  are  familiar  with  the  Holy  Scriptures  we  hear 
the  patEetic  cry  of  Isais:  "  There  is  no  beauty  in  Him 
now,  nor  comeliness  despised,  *  *  *  a  man 

of  sorrows.     *     *     *     His  look  was  as  it  were  hidden 
from  us. 

"He  was  led  as  a  sheep  to  the  slaughter  and  He  did 
not  open  His  mouth." 

"I  have  given  my  body  to  the  scourgers,  and  my  cheeks 
to  the  strikers;  I  have  not  turned  away  my  face  from 
them  that  rebuked  me,  and  spat  upon  me."  We  call  up 
the  prophetic  words  of  the  inspired  writer  of  the  Psalms. 

' '  I  am  poured  out  like  water :  they  have  dug  my  hands 
and  feet." 

"They  gave  me  gall  for  my  food,  and  in  my  thirst  they 
gave  me  vinegar  to  drink:  My  God,  My  God,  hast  thou 
forsaken  me  ? ' '  We  listen  to  Jeremias  speaking  with  the 
voice  of  the  Victim  of  Divine  Love  sacrificed  before  our 
very  eyes :  ' '  My  tabernacle  is  laid  waste,  all  my  cords 
are  broken;  my  children  have  abandoned  me,  and  they 
are  not :  there  is  none  to  stretch  forth  my  tent  any  more : 
I  am  left  alone." 

While  we  stand  with  eyes  fastened  on  the  solitary  and 
bleeding  Figure,  we  see  Him  die.  He  is  dead !  From  His 
hands,  from  His  head  fallen  away  from  the  dead  muscles 
and  resting  on  the  naked  breast,  from  the  gaping  wound 
made  by  the  soldier's  lance,  the  blood  no  longer  flows. 
The  body  is  bloodless,  but  between  the  muscles,  through 
the  delicate  and  transparent  skin,  one  may  count  the 
bones  of  the  Crucified,  one  might  number  the  pulsations 
of  the  heart  before  it  ceased  to  beat. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

THE  PKADEKA  AND  GUANO  BEDS. 

From  my  first  chapter  on  Lower  California  I  may 
have  left  the  impression  on  the  minds  of  my  readers 
that  the  entire  peninsula  is  a  waste  of  desolation  or  tb&t 
,'in  anathema  of  sterility  had  withered  the  whole  country. 
This  would  not  be  the  truth.  As  we  near  the  southwest 
ern  coast  the  land  struggles  to  shed  more  vegetation  and 
we  begin  to  experience  a  mild,  soft  and  almost  langurous 
air.  The  palo  verde,  the  mesquite,  the  giant  sahuaros 
and  many  varieties  of  the  cacti  gradually  appear.  Along 
the  eastern  coast  the  land  is  yet  more  covered  with 
mesquite  trees,  and  malma  and  bunch  grass  above  which 
looms  the  columnar  pithahaya.  The  mesas  or  table  lands 
of  sand  have  here  and  there  groo  and  gramma  grasses. 
Then,  as  we  climb  the  mountains  we  meet  scrub  oak  and 
Hll  juniper,  till  at  an  elevation  of  6,000  feet  we  enter 
the  pine  lands.  Owing  to  the  peculiarity  of  the  river 
beds  which  run  through  loose  quarternary  deposits  the 
water  which  flows  down  the  mountains  during  the  rainy 
seasons  disappears  in  the  porous  earth,  seeks  under 
ground  channels,  and  after  following  its  subterranean 
course  for  many  miles,  is  lost  entirely  or  comes  again 
to  the  surface  where  the  older  formation  rises  or  is 
crossed  by  a  dyke  forming  a  natural  dam. 

By  reason  of  the  clearness  of  the  atmosphere  and  the 
absence  of  all  foreign  substances  in  the  air  distances  are 
deceptive  and  appearances  delusive.  Small  objects,  such 
as  the  outlines  of  an  isolated  mound,  the  face  of  a  pro 
jecting  rock  or  a  browsing  steer  loom  large  and  stand 


122  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

out  sharp  and  well  defined.  At  a  distance  of  fifteen 
miles  foothills  seem  but  one  or  two  miles  off.  From  the 
top  of  Para  hill,  fifty  miles  inland,  I  have  seen  the  pano 
rama  of  the  shores  and  bay,  the  town  of  La  Paz,  the  hills 
and  valleys,  all  clearly  outlined.  The  escarpment  of  the 
San  Juan  mountains,  100  mies  to  the  north  of  the  hill 
on  which  I  was  standing,  seemed  but  twenty  miles  away, 
and  from  the  highest  peak  of  the  Cerita  range,  on  a  fine, 
clear  day,  they  tell  me,  a  circular  panorama  350  miles 
in  diameter,  inclosing  the  most  varied  scenes  of  tower 
ing  mountains,  sunken  deserts  of  yellow,  shifting  sands, 
patches  of  cultivated  land  and  rolling  ocean,  is  plainly 
visible.  This  diaphanous  condition  of  the  atmosphere 
is  so  deceptive  that  a  stranger  will  sometimes  begin  a 
walk  for  a  neighboring  hill,  thinking  it  only  a  few  miles 
off,  when  in  reality,  it  is  twenty  miles  away. 

In  certain  stretches  of  this  wonderful  land  currents  of 
air  of  widely  different  temperature,  and  hydrometric 
layers  of  atmosphere  lying  one  over  the  other  produce 
an  electric  condition  like  what  we  are  told  occurs  on  the 
high  Peruvian  Andes.  Owing  to  extreme  dryness  the 
ground  is  a  very  poor  conductor,  so  that  the  superabund 
ance  of  electricity  in  the  air  corrodes  metallic  imple 
ments  or  objects  exposed  and  left  upon  the  ground  for 
any  length  of  time.  At  times  when  desert  storms  sweep 
across  the  face  of  the  land  the  air  is  so  abundantly 
charged  with  electricity  that  the  hair  of  the  head  will 
stand  out  like  that  of  a  boy  on  an  insulating  stool.  The,, 
hair  on  horses'  tails  and  manes  become  like  the  bristles 
on  a  brush,  but  seemingly  no  annoying  effects  follow. 
There  are  regions  of  this  extraordinary  land  where  rheu 
matism  is  unknown.  Leather  articles,  books  and  goods 
which  mildew  in  other  coast  lands,  may  here  remain  ex- 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  123 

posed  night  and  day  without  injury,  showing  the  harm 
less  character  of  the  climate,  in  striking  contrast  with 
that  of  the  Madeira  and  Canary  Island  where  leather 
molds,  salts  deliquice,  unprotected  metal  rusts,  botani 
cal  specimens  spoil  and  musical  instruments  cannot  be 
kepi  in  tune.  Mulberry  trees  in  Italy  and  Southern 
France  require  constant  care  and  vigilance,  but  here, 
once  planted,  they  demand  no  further  attention.  There 
are  here  stretches  of  land  where  in  the  dry,  hot  and  rari- 
fied  air  meats,  eggs,  fish  and  fowl  remain  untainted  for 
days. 

Back  of  the  ancient  and  historic  town  of  Loretto — 
with  which  I  will  deal  in  another  place — there  is  a  valley 
of  contradiction,  full  of  fascination  to  the  eye  to-day,  and 
to-morrow  a  land  of  desolation  and  of  horror.  It  is 
called  "La  Pradera  Honda, "  the  deep  meadow,  from  its 
marvelous  wealth  and  coloring  of  vegetation  at  certain 
seasons  and  times. 

The  Pradera  reposes  between  two  menacing  ranges  of 
barren  mountains  which  yet  retain  the  ancient  marks 
left  by  the  waters  when  the  desert  was  an  inland  lake. 
When  I  saw  "La  Pradera "  a  few  days  ago  it  was  under 
a  shroud  of  sand,  and  of  ashes  that  the  angry  volcanoes 
of  the  mountains  had,  long  ago,  vomited  upon  it. 

Turning  to  my  Mexican  companion  and  extending  my 
hand  toward  the  Prada,  I  asMd:  "Is  there  any  life 
there ?"  "Si,  senor,"  he  answered,  "there  is  life  there, 
but  it  is  life  that  is  death  to  you  and  me.  You  see  these 
intermittent  and  miniature  forests  of  bisnoga  and  cienga 
cacti?  They  shade  and  protect  from  the  fierce  rays  of 
a  burning  sun  the  deadly  rattlesnake,  the  horned  snake 
that  strikes  to  kill,  the  kangaroo  rat,  the  tarantula,  the 


124  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

c&awalla,  the  white  scorpion,  the  arena  centipede,  lizards 
and  poisonous  spiders." 

The  sun  beat  down  upon  the  deadly  silence,  upon  the 
dull  gray  floor  of  the  desert  where  the  bunched  blades  of 
the  yucca  bristled  stiff  in  the  hot,  sandy  waste.  But 
before  coming  here  I  had  heard  of  another  and  more 
wonderful  life  than  the  reptile  existence  dwelt  upon  by 
my  friend.  There  are  times  when  torrential  storms  of 
rain  rage  fiercely  among  the  mountains  bordering  this 
arid  land  or  a  drifting  cloud  loaded  with  water  strikes  a 
towering  peak.  When  these  things  happen,  rivers  of 
water  flow  madly  down  the  furrows  worn  in  the  face  of 
the  great  hills,  and,  hitting  the  desert,  separate  into 
sheets  of  liquid  refreshment  which  give  life  and  beauty 
to  desolation  and  aridity.  They  come,  says  the  inspired 
writer,  by  the  command  of  God,  "to  satisfy  the  desolate 
and  waste  ground  and  to  cause  the  seed  in  the  parched 
earth  to  spring  forth."  Then  the  ashen  white  waste  is 
all  aglow  with  myriad  blossoms,  and  the  desert  sands 
are  covered  with  a  most  beautiful  carpet  of  wonderful 
flowers  for  many  of  which  the  science  of  botany  has  no 
name. 

Of  all  these  plants  that  bloom  in  this  vale  of  Hinom, 
perhaps,  the  most  pleasing  to  the  eye  are  the  flowers  of 
the  cacti,  and  the  rapidity  with  which  their  dry  and  a.p- 
parently  dead  stalks  throw  out  beautiful  blossoms  after 
their  roots  are  watered,  is  one  of  the  marvels  of  the  des 
ert.  The  cacti  of  La  Pradera  are  an  annual  manifesta 
tion  of  the  realism  of  death  and  resurrection  and,  as  the 
plants  come  into  fullest  bloom  in  early  spring,  this  desert 
at  the  time  of  Easter  is  one  vast  circular  meadow  where 
the  rarest  and  most  beautiful  flowers  have  risen  from 
their  graves  as  if  to  glorify  the  resurrection  of  their 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  125 

Lord  and  Master.  The  largest  and  most  wonderful 
flower  of  them  all  grows,  I  am  told,  on  an  ugly,  short, 
misshapen  cactus  which,  for  eleven  months  of  the  year 
is  to  all  outward  seeming,  dead,  but  when  its  roots  are 
watered,  blooms  with  supremely  delicate  and  waxy  pet 
als.  There  is  another  cactus,  a  low  creeping  plant  of 
round  trunk  and  pointed  stem,  repellent  as  a  snake,  and 
ugly  to  look  upon  which,  at  about  the  time  of  the  vernal 
equinox,  is  covered  wth  large  pink  flowers,  beautiful  as 
orchids  and  fragrant  as  the  fairest  rose  in  my  lady's 
garden.  Then  by  the  sides,  and  between  the  Mexican 
agaves  and  the  white  plumed  yuccas  with  trembling  serri- 
ated  leaves,  are  scattered  in  luxuriant  prodigality  co 
lumbines,  phloxes,  verbenas  and  as  many  as  twenty  or 
thirty  varieties  of  flowering  plants  for  which  my  limited 
knowledge  of  botany  supplies  no  names.  Unfortunately, 
for  the  present,  the  names  of  many  of  these  rare  species 
are  not  known  even  to  our  professional  botanists,  and 
the  common  varieties  of  those  which  are  classified,  and 
found  in  other  parts  of  California  bear  no  such  fascinat 
ing  and  gorgeous  array  of  flowers  as  those  indigenous  to 
the  "Pra'dera"  desert. 

The  Islands  of  St.  George  off  the  east  coast  of  the 
Peninsula  of  California  are  a  singular  group  of  squeeze^ 
or  lifted  rocks  on  which  the  dew  never  settles  and  where 
rain  never  falls  for  years.  These  are  the  famous  ' '  rook 
ery  islands ' '  where,  for  uncounted  years,  enormous  num 
bers  of  birds  of  the  sea  and  of  the  land  have  built  theif 
nests,  deposited  their  eggs  and  hatched  their  young.  By 
some  mysterious  law  of  instinct  and  selection  the  birds, 
from  the  beginning,  alloted  small  islands  and  sections  on 
the  larger  islands  to  the  different  species  of  the  feather 
ed  race,  so  that  the  sea  birds,  like  the  frigate  pelicans, 


126  BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL. 

the  gulls,  petrels  and  the  like  have  their  own  allotments 
and  the  land  birds  theirs,  and  between  them  there  is  no 
friction  or  intrusion  on  each  others'  premises.  With 
the  first  sign  of  dawn  they  begin  the  flight  for  their  feed 
ing  grounds,  and  for  hours  the  heavens  are  intermittent 
ly  obscured  by  the  countless  members  of  this  aerial  host. 
They  fly  in  battalions,  or  in  orderly  detachments,  reach 
the  feeding  grounds  on  land  or  water  fifty  or  a  hundred 
miles  away  and  at  once  scatter  and  separate  in  search  of 
food.  An  hour  before  twilight,  and  timing  their  distance, 
they  rise  again,  converge  to  an  aerial  center  and  wing 
for  home.  As  the  birds  approach  the  rookeries  they 
announce  their  coming  by  cries,  calls  or  shrieks  and  are 
answered  by  those  on  the  nests  or  by  the  young  but  lately 
hatched.  The  cry  of  the  birds  is  heard  far  out  at  sea, 
and  to  the  ship  that  sees  no  land,  the  effect  is  weird  and 
ghastly,  if  not  ghostly.  The  decomposing  bodies  of  dead 
birds,  of  feathers,  bones,  flesh  and  entrails,  the  disinte 
gration  of  shells  and  the  droppings  from  millions  of 
birds  for  thousands  of  years  have  superimposed  upon 
the  primitive  surface  of  the  islands  a  deposit  of  great 
commercial  value,  and  in  places  eighty  feet  deep.  This 
deposit,  saturated  with  ammonia  and  phosphorus,  is 
called  guano  and,  wherever  found,  is  dug  out,  chiefly  by 
Chinese  coolies,  loaded  on  ships  and  freighted  to  the  sea 
ports  of  Europe,  where  it  is  bagged  or  barreled  and  sold 
to  gardeners  and  farmers  for  fertilizing  their  lands.  On 
islands  like  Rotunda  off  Antigua,  where  the  rock  is  por 
ous  and  friable,  and  on  which  rain  occasionally  falls,  the 
guano  liquefies,  percolates  through  the  porous  stone  and 
decomposes  the  rocks  into  what  is  known  as  mineral 
phosphates. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

OEIGI1T   OP  THE  PIOUS  FUND. 

Felicien  Pascal,  the  French  publicist,  devotes  an  ar 
ticle  in  Le  Monde  Modern,  to  an  explanation  of  the  mis 
sionary  success  of  the  Society  of  Jesus,  the  members  of 
which  are  known  to  us  as  Jesuits.  It  is  rather  excep 
tional  for  a  French  freethinker  to  write  calmly  and  dis 
passionately  of  a  religious  association  whose  creed  and 
manner  of  life  are  in  direct  antithesis  to  his  own.  Much 
has  been  written  at  various  periods  in  their  history  of 
the  "secrets"  of  the  Jesuits;  but,  asserts  Mr.  Pascal, 
"the  great  secret  of  their  strength  is  their  sublime  disci 
pline.  To  this  discipline  the  Jesuits  have  always  owed 
their  marvelous  power  and  their  acceptabilty  as  a  chosen 
body  of  "highly  trained  specialists  among  the  ruling 
classes  of  Europe  and  in  the  savage  wilds  of  Africa  and 
America. ' y 

Mr.  Pascal  is  experimenting  with  a  social  and  histori 
cal  fact  and  is  disposed  to  deal  honestly  and  dispassion 
ately  with  its  origin.  Having  no  faith  in  the  super 
natural,  it  was  not  to  be  expected  that  the  French  sociol 
ogist  would  look  beyond  the  human  and  the  natural  for 
the  solution  of  a  great  problem.  Unquestionably  he  is 
right  as  far  as  he  goes  or  his  negations  will  permit  him 
to  go.  St.  Paul,  the  prototype  of  all  missionaries,  writ 
ing  to  the  Corinthians,  recounts  for  their  edification  his 
own  sufferings  and  sorrows,  his  "perils  in  the  wilder 
ness,  in  labor  and  painfulness,  in  watchings  often,  in 
hunger  and  thirst,  in  many  fastings,  in  cold  and  naked 
ness."  Further  on,  this  extraordinary  man,  "called  to 


128  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

be  an  apostle  out  of  due  time,"  tells  us  why,  according 
to  men  of  the  world,  he  was  a  fool.  "I  take  pleasure  in 
my  infirmities,  in  reproaches,  in  necessities,  in  persecu 
tion,  in  distresses — for  Christ's  sake."  On  another  oc 
casion  when  writing  to  the  Christians  at  Eome,  he  says 
that  to  men  of  the  type  of  Mr.  Pascal,  the  heroism  of 
martyrs,  confessors  and  missionaries,  is  foolishness; 
that  ft  is  impossible  for  the  natural  or  worldly  man  to 
understand  the  things  that  are  of  the  kingdom  of  God. 

And  now,  let  me.  record  for  the  edification  of  my  read 
ers,  the  deeds  of  fraternal  love  and  self-denial  wrought 
among  the  savage  tribes  of  this  unho  spit  able  land  centu 
ries  ago  by  men  whose  heroism  and  success,  Mr.  Pascal 
and  men  like  him  try  to  explain  by  human  discipline  and 
human  organization.  In  an  earlier  chapter  I  dwelt  pass 
ingly  on  the  attempt  of  the  Spaniard  Otondo  to  establish 
a  settlement  on  the  shores  of  the  Bay  of  La  Paz.  For 
eighteen  months  the  Spanish  colonists  tilled  and  coaxed 
a  sandy  soil  and  they  reaped  cactus,  sage  brush  and  dis 
appointment.  During  these  eighteen  months  not  one 
drop  of  rain  fell  upon  the  soil,  now  dry  and  parched  as 
the  tongue  of  Dives.  Otondo,  in  disgust,  broke  up  the 
settlement,  called  off  his  men  and  sailed  away  for  Man- 
zanillo. 

'With  Otondo 's  colonists,  when  they  left  Chalca, 
Sinoloa,  went  three  Jesuit  priests,  one  as  cartographist 
to  the  expedition,  and  the  two  others  as  missionaries  to 
the  natives.  They  now  pleaded  to  be  permitted  to  re 
main  with  the  tribes,  for  already  they  were  mastering 
the  language  and  dialects  and  had  under  instruction 
nearly  four  hundred  adults  and  children.  Father  Copart 
tad  already  begun  the  composition  of  a  "doctrina"  or 
short  catechism  in  the  native  dialects.  He  experienced 


BY  PATH  AND  TEAIL.  129 

much  trouble,  he  tells  us  in  a  letter  written  to  a  clerical 
friend,  in  finding  words  and  idioms  to  explain  the  doc 
trines  of  Christianity,  but  with  the  help  of  the  children 
he  got  on  fairly  well.  The  fathers  asked  to  be  left  with 
the  tribes,  but  Otondo  declared  that  he  could  not  take 
upon  himself  the  responsibility  of  leaving  a  solitary 
European  on  the  accursed  shore  and  insisted  on  the 
priests  returning  to  Mexico  with  him. 

Thus  ended  the  first  attempt  to  found  a  settlement 
in  Lower  California.  What  a  singular  fatality  fol 
lowed  in  the  wakes  of  nearly  all  the  first  settlements 
on  the  coasts  of  North  America.  Kaleigh's  planta 
tion  in  Virginia  was  abandoned  after  four  years  of  dis 
appointment  and  heart-breakings,  though  Grenville, 
the  partner  of  Ealeigh,  said  the  land  was  "the  goodliest 
soil  under  the  cope  of  heaven. "  The  first  settlement  in 
New  England  was  even  shorter  lived  and  Goswald  and 
Popham  brought  back  their  colonists  from  Maine,  as  did 
Otondo  from  California.  The  story  of  the  hardships  and 
sufferings  from  cold  and  scurvy  of  the  first  French  set 
tlers  on  the  St.  Charles  is  paralleled  by  the  history  of 
Vizcaino's  voyage  and  landing  in  the  Bay  of  Monterey. 

Twenty  years  after  Otondo 's  failure  England  called  off 
its  first  contingent  of  settlers  from  Tangiers.  La  Salle, 
the  explorer,  and  one  of  the  grandest  men  that  ever  trod 
the  American  continent,  was  shot  by  his  own  men  and 
his  dream  of  colonization  ended.  The  pioneer  Scotch 
colony  at  Darien  failed  absolutely,  as  did  Selkirk's  settle 
ment  in  the  Canadian  Northwest  one  hundred  years  ago. 

The  colonization  of  Lower  California,  such  as  it  was 
and  is,  was  finally  effected  mainly  through  the  persistent 
efforts  and  untiring  zeal  of  two  Jesuit  priests,  Eusebio 
Kino  and  Gian-Maria  Salvatierra.  Some  day  the  lives 


130  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

of  these  heroic  and  saintly  men  will  be  written  and  will 
give  added  dignity  and  importance  to  the  history  of 
Christian  missions  on  the  continent  of  America. 

Once  having  begun  the  conversion  of  a  savage  or  bar 
barous  people,  the  Jesuit  missionaries  never  voluntarily 
retire  from  the  field.  It  was  at  no  time,  and  is  not  now,  a 
part  of  the  policy  of  the  constitution  of  the  order  to  des 
pair  of  converting  a  people  who  spurned  their  friendly 
advances  or  with  bloody  hands  welcomed  them  to  hospit 
able  graves.  The  Society  of  Jesus  is  not,  by  any  means, 
the  greatest  missionary  body  to  which  the  Catholic 
church  has  given  birth.  Any  one  familiar  with  Montal- 
ambert  's  great  history,  ' '  The  Monks  of  the  West, ' '  must 
concede  that  the  church  has  been  the  fruitful  mother  of 
heroic  and  zealous  missionary  orders.  Considering  the 
duration  of  its  existence,  it  must,  however,  be  admitted 
that  the  Society  of  Jesus  is  on  a  plane  of  successful 
equality  with  any  organization  established  since  apos 
tolic  times  for  the  conversion  and  civilization  of  pagan 
nations  and  savage  tribes.  It  is  a  hopeful  augury  for 
the  establishment  and  permanency  of  a  more  friendly 
feeling  among  us  all  that,  since  Parkman  gave  us  his 
" Jesuits  in  North  America/'  the  hostility  to  the  great 
order  among  English  speaking  races  is,  like  an  unpleas 
ant  odor,  gradually  evaporating. 

After  reading  Otondo's  "Beport"  of  the  failure  of 
the  California  colony,  the  horrible  degradation  of  the 
tribes  and  the  pitiful  sterility  of  the  land,  the  Spanish 
viceroy  to  Mexico  advised  the  home  government  to  have 
nothing  more  to  do  with  the  accursed  country.  The 
King  of  Spain  followed  the  recommendation  of  his  rep 
resentative,  and  Lower  California  was  abandoned  to  its 
sagebrush,  scorpions,  tarantulas  and  naked  savages. 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  131 

Despairing  of  obtaining  any  help  or  even  encourage 
ment  from  the  Spanish  or  Mexican  officials,  Father  Sal va- 
tierra  now  appealed  to  the  zeal  and  Christian  charity  of 
the  Spainards  in  Mexico  to  assist  him  in  his  effort  to  re 
open  the  mission  to  the  Digger  Indians.  Father  Eusibio 
Kino,  who  was  with  the  Otondo  expedition,  and  Father 
Juan  Ugarte  flung  themselves  into  the  good  work  and 
with  speech  and  pen  pleaded  for  the  California  tribes. 
It  was  impossible  to  resist  the  call  of  these  men;  the 
piety  of  their  daily  lives,  the  sincerity  of  their  motives, 
their  scholarship,  eloquence  and  heroism  awoke  enthu 
siasm  and  touched  generous,  though  until  now,  indiffer 
ent  hearts.  Subscriptions  began  to  move.  From  far 
away  Queretaro,  Padre  Cabellero,  a  priest  who  inherited 
parental  wealth,  sent  $10,000.  The  "Congregation  of 
Our  Lady  of  Sorrows, "  a  confraternity  of  holy  women, 
promised  a  yearly  sum  of  $500;  Count  de  Miravalles 
subscribed  $1,000 ;  Pedro  Sierrepe  of  Acapulco  gave  the 
fathers  a  lancha  or  long  boat  and  offered  the  loan  of  his 
ship  for  a  transport,  and  from  Mexico  City  and  towns  in 
the  vice  royal  provinces  came  liberal  contributions. 

These  generous  donations  Father  Salvatierra  formed 
into  a  fund,  or,  as  we  would  say  to-day,  capitalized  for 
the  evangelization  of  the  California  Indians  and  the  sup 
port  of  the  California  missions.  Thus  began  the  famous 
"Fondo  Piadoso  de  California,"  of  which  we  have  heard 
so  much  and  which  involved  in  its  distribution  and  par 
tial  settlement  two  religious  orders  and  three  civilized 
nations,  and  for  which,  to  quiet  a  claim  against  it,  the 
government  of  the  United  States  lately  paid  the  arch 
bishop  of  San  Francisco  three  hundred  and  eighty-five 
thousand  dollars. 

On  the  13th  of  July,  1697,  the  ship  of  Pedro  Sierrepe 


132  BY  PATH  AND  TBATL. 

loaded  with  supplies  for  the  infant  mission  sailed  out  of 
the  harbor  of  Acapulco,  on  the  Pacific  coast,  and  pass 
ing  through  the  straits  of  Magellan,  finally,  after  two 
months  of  ocean  travel,  rounded  Cape  San  Lucas  and 
anchored  in  the  Yaqui  bay,  Gulf  of  Cortes,  now  the  Gulf 
of  California.  Father  Salvatierra,  who  had  come  over 
land  to  Sonora,  was,  with  the  illustrious  Kino,  giving  a 
mission  to  the  Yaquis  when  he  was  informed  of  the  ar 
rival  of  the  ship.  Kino  made  preparations  to  accom 
pany  him  to  Lower  California  when  the  Governor  of 
Sonora  intervened. 

The  provinces  of  Sinoloa  and  Sonora  were  at  this 
particular  time  threatened  with  an  Indian  uprising,  the 
governor  refused  to  let  Kino  leave  him,  contending 
that  the  influence  of  the  priest  in  controlling  the  rest 
less  Yaquis  and  Mayos  was  greater  than  the  pres 
ence  of  a  thousand  soldiers.  So  Salvatierra  sailed 
alone  out  of  the  Yaqui  bay  and  in  October  landed  in 
Lower  California,  twenty  miles  north  of  the  site  chosen 
by  Otondo  for  his  unfortunate  colony.  Like  that  heroic 
Canadian  missionary,  Breboeuf,  Salvatierra,  when  he 
landed,  knelt  upon  the  beach  and  placing  the  country 
under  the  protection  of  the  Blessed  Virgin,  invoked  the 
help  of  God  in  the  work  he  was  about  to  undertake.  Then 
rising  he  exclaimed  aloud,  "hie  requiescam,  quoniam 
elegi  earn" — I  will  remain  here,  for  I  myself  have  cho 
sen  it.  After  the  landing  of  the  baggage,  the  provisions 
and  a  few  domestic  animals  the  party  rested  for  the 
night. 

Here  is  the  roster  of  the  first  settlement  and  prac 
tically  the  first  Christian  mission  which  led  to  the  civili 
zation  of  the  tribes  and  the  exploration  of  all  California. 
A  Portuguese  pick  and  shovel  man  called  Lorenzo,  three 
Christianized  Mexican  Indians,  a  Peruvian  mulatto,  a 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  133 

Mexican  half-caste  from  Guadalajara,  one  Sicilian  and 
one  Maltese,  sailors  who  had  served  in  a  Philippine 
galleon  and  one  Jesuit  priest,  Father  Salvatierra.  In  the 
history  of  early  colonization,  in  any  part  of  the  world, 
there  is  no  page  recording  anything  like  this  or  any 
enterprise  composed  of  such  seemingly  hopeless  ma 
terial.  And  yet  under  the  masterful  mind  of  the  mis 
sionary,  with  faith,  piety  and  tact  these  human  frag 
ments  were  welded  into  a  compact  body  that  conquered 
a  stubborn  soil  and  conciliated  tribal  opposition. 

The  Maltees  sailor  was  also  an  ex-gunner  and  to  him 
fell  the  honor  of  mounting  the  miserable  little  cannon 
brought  from  Acapulco  to  protect  the  mission  if  attack 
ed  by  the  natives.  The  Mexican  Indians,  under  the  eye 
of  Lorenzo,  were  to  till  a  few  acres  of  ground,  look  after 
the  few  cattle,  sheep  and  goats  brought  in  the  ship,  and 
in  a  pinch,  do  some  fighting.  After  throwing  up  a  tem 
porary  chapel  and  staking  off  the  ground,  they  began 
the  building  of  a  rough  stone  wall  around  the  camp  and 
mission  to  guard  men  and  animals  against  the  hostility 
or  covetousness  of  the  savages.  The  Indians  gathered 
from  near  and  far,  and  looked  on  stolidly,  making  no 
demonstrations  of  friendship  or  dislike. 

I  already  mentioned  that  Father  Copart  of  Otondo's 
expedition  had  partially  compiled  a  catechism  of  the 
Cochimis  or  "Digger  Indian "  language.  Salvatierra 
from  this  unfinished  abridgement  gained  some  knowledge 
of  the  savage  tongue.  He  began,  as  did  the  Jesuits  with 
the  Wyandottes,  by  appealing  to  their  affections  through 
their  wretched  and  always  half -starved  stomachs.  After 
filling  them  wth  cornmeal  porridge,  he  addressed  them 
in  Copart 's  gutterals,  tried  to  teach  them  a  few  Spanish 
words,  and  after  three  months  baptized  his  first  convert 


134  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

— a  cancer  victim — to  whom  Father  Copart  had  given 
some  instruction  eleven  years  before.  To  the  infant  vil 
lage  and  mission  he  gave  the  name  of  Loretto  the  same 
name  which  Father  Chaumonont  had  bestowed  on  the 
little  bourg  outside  of  Quebec,  where  he  sheltered,  and 
where  yet  dwell  the  last  of  the  Hurons. 


CHAPTEE  XVI. 

THE  REPOSE  OF  THE  GRAVE. 

I  well  remember  the  afternoon  I  arrived — after  a  ride 
across  the  mountains  of  thirty-two  miles — at  a  turn  of 
the  narrow  road  and,  for  the  first  time,  looked  down 
upon  the  quaint  and  historically  fascinating  village  of 
Loretto,  Lower  California. 

This  is  the  place.    Stand  still,  my  steed, 

Let  me  review  the  scene, 
And  summon  from  the  shadowy  past 

The  forms  that  once  had  been. 

Eight  generations  of  human  life  had  come  into  the 
world,  lived  their  uneventful  but  singular  existence,  and 
when  the  time  came  were  laid  away  with  those  who  had 
preceded  them,  since  first  the  Spanish  missionary  bore  a 
message  from  the  crucified  Christ  to  the  most  loathsome 
of  men  and  women  that  ever  walked  the  earth.  Yet  they 
could  claim,  if  they  but  knew  it,  kinship  with  God,  the 
immutable  and  eternal,  through  Him  whose  message  of 
friendship  and  love  the  Spanish  Ambassador  was  sent 
to  deliver. 

Unless  God  the  Almighty  took  away  their  human  and 
gave  them  a  brute  nature,  it  was  impossible  for  the 
"Digger  Indians "  or  for  any  human  beings  to  approach 
nearer  to  the  brute's  state. 

There  existence  was  a  hell  of  foul  licentiousness,  of 
nameless  lusts,  of  hunger,  thirst,  of  disease  and  physical 
suffering,  and  there  was  no  hope  for  betterment  save  in 
annihilation  or  reconstruction,  or  rather  resurrection. 
The  civilized  and  educated  man  who  entered  this  barren 


136  BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL. 

desolation  of  savagery,  and  devoted  his  life  and  his  tal 
ents  to  the  taming  and  uplifting  of  these  brutalized  men 
and  women  was  a  fool  or  a  saint.  This  Father  Salva- 
tierra,  who  first  came  to  live  and  companion  with  them, 
was  a  Jesuit  priest,  and  though  terrible  things  have  been 
said  and  written  about  the  Jesuits,  their  bitterest  ene 
mies  never  pilloried  them  as  fools. 

"When  we  have  delivered  our  attacks  and  exhausted 
our  ammunition  on  the  Jesuits, "'  writes  de  Marcillacr 
"we  must,  as  honorable  foes,  acknowledge  they  are,  as  a 
body,  the  greatest  scholars  and  most  fearless  missiona 
ries  known  to  the  world. ' ' 

When  I  entered  this  curious  little  Indian  and  Mexi 
can  village,  Loretto,  I  carried  with  me  a  sense  of  rever 
ence  for  the  place  and  of  respect  for  the  memory  of  the 
consecrated  men  whose  sublime  heroism  stiii  nves  in  the 
tradition  of  the  simple  people.  The  following  morning, 
after  assisting  at  the  sacrifice  of  the  mass  offered  up  by 
a  very  dark,  half -Indian  priest,  I  entered  the  unpreten 
tious  but  well  and  cleanly  kept  graveyard  to  the  rear  of 
the  church.  All  over  the  great  Eepublic  of  Mexico,  in 
Chiapas,  Yucatan,  Tabasco,  in  the  states  of  Central 
America,  wherever  I  went,  I  saw  many  things  which  I 
thought  could  be  improved,  but  I  must  confess  that  their 
churches  were  always  clean  and  their  graveyards  and 
cemeteries  well  looked  after.  The  Spaniards,  like  the 
Jesuits,  have  been  given  hard  knocks,  but  they  were 
never  charged  with  being  an  unclean  people.  The  Latin 
Americans  have  inherited  cleanliness  from  the  Span 
iards. 

To  me,  who  was  fairly  familiar  with  the  humble  but 
heroic  history  of  Loretto,  with  the  unspeakable  degrada 
tion  of  the  early  tribes  and  the  miracles  of  rehabilitation 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  137 

wrought  among  them  by  the  Jesuit  and  Franciscan  fa 
thers,  this  consecrated  plot  of  ground  was  full  of  con 
soling  memories.  Here  and  there  a  monument  of  Todos 
Santos  marble  lifted  itself  above  a  forest  of  unpreten 
tious  crosses  marking  the  graves  of  half-castes  and  In 
dians.  These  humble  black  crosses,  with  a  ribbon  of 
white  paint  bordering  the  black,  bore  unpronounceable 
names,  the  age  and  the  day  of  the  death  of  the  deceased 
in  Spanish.  Some  very  few  monuments  had  more  elab 
orate  inscriptions,  but  all,  marble  and  wood,  carried  the 
Catholic  and  early  Christian  "Kequiescat  in  pace" — 
May  he  or  she  rest  in  peace. 

Dominating  all  in  magnitude  and  impressiveness  was 
the  great  central  cross  of  cedar,  the  crux  sanctorum,  in 
dicating  that  the  enclosed  ground  was  consecrated  and 
exclusively  reserved  for  the  bodies  of  those  who  died  in 
union  with  the  Catholic  church  and  sleep  the  sleep  of 
peace.  The  transverse  bar  bore  this  inscription  from  the 
Book  of  Ecclesiastes : 

* '  Corpora  sanctorum  in  pace  sepulta  sunt :  et  nomina 
Eorum  vivent  in  generationem  et  generationem. ' ' 

(The  Bodies  of  the  just  are  buried  in  peace  and  their 
names  live  from  generation    to    generation.)     Further 
down  on  the  cross  was  a  verse  from  the  Psalms : 
"Qui  seminant  in  lacrimis  in  gaudio  metent." 

(Those  who  sow  in  tears  will  reap  in  joy.) 

A  few  months  before  my  visit  to  Loretto,  the  young 
daughter  of  the  harbor-master — a  very  charming  and 
beautiful  girl  of  seventeen — was  drowned  in  the  bay.  Her 
body  was  recovered  almost  immediately,  but  for  a  time 
it  was  feared  her  mother  would  lose  her  mind.  The  af 
fection  and  sorrow  of  her  family  are  materialized  in  one 
of  the  most  chaste  and  purest  shafts  of  marble  I  have 


138  BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL. 

anywhere  looked  upon.  It  is  the  only  monument  I  have 
ever  seen  in  a  Catholic,  or  indeed  in  any  graveyard, 
carrying  a  Christian  and  Pagan  inscription.  The  brother 
of  the  young  girl  is  a  free-thinker,  who  worshiped  his 
sister  with  the  respect  and  affection  of  a  brother  and 
the  passion  of  a  lover.  He  entreated  his  father  to  have 
chiseled  on  his  sister's  monument,  under  the  "Bequies- 
cat  in  pace,"  Ximinsez'  epitaph  on  the  tomb  of  Inez. 
Translated  it  would  read: 

Warm  southern  sun, 

Shine  kindly  here; 
Warm  southern  wind, 

Blow  gently  here; 

/• 
Green  sod  above, 

Lie  light,  lie  light, 
Good-night,  dear  heart, 
Good-night,  good-night. ' ' 

I  referred  in  another  place  to  M.  Pascal  Felicien's  ex 
planation  of  the  missionary  success  of  the  Jesuits.  If, 
like  M.  Felicien,  they  had  no  hope  of  immortality  or  ex 
pectation  of  a  judgment  to  come,  men  of  the  heroic  self- 
denial  of  Salvatiera  and  the  other  evangelizers  of  the 
"Digger  Indians"  would  be  to  us  sublime  examples  of 
folly,  if  not  of  insanity,  developed  by  religious  fanati 
cism.  But,  perverted  ingenuity  itself  has  never  brought 
a  charge  of  religious  imbecility  against  the  members  of 
the  great  Order,  and  Eugene  Sue  but  popularized  the 
expression  of  Carrier  de  Nantes  when  he  wrote:  "The 
sons  of  Loyla  are  too  wise  for  superstition  and  too  delib 
erate  for  fanaticism." 

When,  last  September,  I  was  on  my  way  to  Guamas 
to  sail  for  La  Paz,  I  laid  over  at  Los  Angeles  expressly 


BY  PATH  AND  TEAIL.  139 

to  call  on  Charles  F.  Lummis,  the  editor  of  ' i  Out  West, ' ' 
and  the  author  of  the  " Spanish  Pioneers."  With  the 
possible  exception  of  Rudolfe  Bandelier,  Mr.  Lummis  is 
the  best  informed  and  most  reliable  living  authority  on 
the  tribes  of  the  southwest  and  the  early  missions  of 
California.  In  answer  to  my  request  for  his  opinion  on 
the  manhood  and  sincerity  of  the  priests  who  fought  the 
wilderness  and  evangelized  the  tribes  of  the  Pacific  coast, 
Mr.  Lummis  took  from  a  shelf  his  "Spanish  Pioneers," 
and,  placing  his  finger  on  a  passage,  asked  me  to  read  it, 
and  this  is  what  I  read:  "Their  zeal  and  their  heroism 
were  infinite.  No  desert  was  too  frightful  for  them,  no 
danger  too  appalling.  Alone,  unarmed,  they  traversed 
the  most  forbidding  lands,  braved  the  most  deadly  sav 
ages,  and  left  on  the  minds  of  the  Indians  such  a  proud 
monument  as  mailed  explorers  and  conquering  armies 
never  made." 

Before  the  "break  up"  of  the  Lower  California  mis 
sions,  caused  by  political  jealousies,  disease  among  the 
tribes  and  civil  wars,  the  Catholic  church  had  established 
sixteen  missions  or  parishes  for  the  Indians,  extending 
from  Tia  Juana  at  the  north,  to  Cape  Palmas  of  the 
south.  Notice  that  I  mention  disease  as  contributory  to 
the  reduction  of  the  missions.  The  passage  of  a  primi 
tive  people  from  savagery  to  civilization,  is  like  in  its 
effects  on  human  systems,  to  the  influence  of  an  entirely 
new  and  unaccustomed  climate  and  is  generally  followed 
by  a  decrease  in  numbers  during  a  transition  period  of 
more  or  less  duration. 

What  this  transition  costs  we  may  estimate  by  analogy 
from  lower  organic  kingdoms.  For  instance,  spring 
wheat  has  been  changed  into  winter  wheat,  but  the  ex 
periment  entailed  a  loss  of  nearly  three  harvests. 


140  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

Wheat  has  been  forced  to  accommodate  itself  to  the 
soil  and  climate  of  Sierra  Leone,  but  only  after  an 
enormous  loss  and  years  of  effort.  Cochin  China  hens 
were  introduced  into  the  state  of  Colombia,  South  Amer 
ica,  and  it  was  twenty  years  before  they  were  acclima 
tized.  So  that  practically  twenty  generations  perished 
before  the  few  which  survived  chickenhood  could  adapt 
themselves  to  conditions  and  increase  in  numbers.  Some 
thing  analogous  happens  when  members  of  the  human 
family  try  to  conform  to  altered  conditions  or  enter  upon 
a  period  of  transition.  It  may  end  in  complete  disap 
pearance  as  in  the  case  of  the  Tasmanians  and  Maoris, 
or  be  followed  by  a  revival  in  vitality  under  new  condi 
tions  as  among  the  Mexicans  and  Filipinos.  When  the 
missionary  priests  entered  California  they  met  a  de 
composing  race,  whose  excesses  and  prolonged  physical 
suffering  from  exposure  and  frequent  starvation  had  re 
duced  them  to  degeneracy.  Their  extinction  in  their  wild 
and  brutalized  state  was  sure  to  occur  in,  ethnologically, 
a  very  short  time.  No  doubt  the  restraints  of  civiliza 
tion  and  the  new  conditions  to  which  they  were  asked  to 
conform  hastened  the  inevitable. 

There  is  left  to-day  out  of  a  population  computed  in 
1698  to  be  six  thousand,  a  scattered  remnant  of,  perhaps, 
fifteen  hundred.  Before  the  expulsionof  the  fathers  and 
the  consequent  abandonment  of  the  missions,  almost  the 
entire  peninsula  was  redeemed  and  its  population  Chris 
tianized  and  civilized.  To-day  the  unorganized  remnant 
roam  th'e  hills  of  Khada-Khama  retaining  a  few  Chris 
tian  practices  wrapt  up  in  the  rags  of  pagan  supersti 
tion.  WEen  they  disappear  forever,  there  will  be  no 
Cooper  to  perpetuate  their  memory,  or  write  a  romance 
on  "The  Last  of  the  Digger  Indians. " 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

SOLDIERS  OF  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT. 

It  may  have  occurred  to  a  few  of  my  readers  who  have 
accompanied  me  in  my  wanderings  in  Northern  Mexico 
and  Lower  California  that  I  have  exhibited  a  rather 
strong  partiality  in  favor  of  the  Jesuit  missionaries  and 
by  my  silence  have  been  unfair  to  those  self-sacrificing 
and  zealous  members  of  the  Order  of  St.  Francis  whose 
undaunted  courage  on  the  mission  fields  of  the  south 
west  have  wrung  applause  even  from  the  materialist  and 
the  infidel.  I  am  filled  with  admiration  for  the  zeal,  the 
self-denial,  the  heroism  of  the  martyrs  and  missionary 
fathers  of  the  Franciscan  order.  From  their  monasteries 
came  men  whose  names  are  beads  of  gold  worthy  to  be 
filed  on  the  Eosary  of  Fame ;  men  of  saintly  lives  and  of 
a  transcendent  greatness  that  raises  them  high  above 
the  level  even,  of  good  men  and  whose  sacrifices  for 
Christ  and  humanity  challenge  the  admiration  of  the 
brave  and  stagger  faith  itself. 

If  I  have  omitted  to  do  honor  to  the  members  of  the 
great  order  it  was  because  I  have  already  been  antici 
pated  by  many  pens  abler  than  mine.  Bancroft,  C.  F. 
Lummis,  Stoddard,  Helen  Hunt  Jackson,  Bryan  Clinch 
and  even  poor  Bret  Harte,  in  fact,  an  army  of 
writers  in  books,  magazines  and  newspapers  have 
sounded  the  praises  of  the  Franciscan  padres, 
forgetting  those  saintly  men,  the  Jesuits,  who  pre 
ceded  the  Franciscans  on  the  thorny  road  and  broke  the 
trail  that  afterward  carried  them  to  the  martyr's  grave 


142  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

in  the  lonely  desert.  The  world,  and  America  in  particu 
lar,  will  never  repay  or  be  able  to  repay  its  debt  to  the 
sons  of  St.  Francis.  Indeed,  I  doubt  if  Columbus  could 
have  sailed  out  of  the  harbor  of  Palos  on  his  providen 
tial  mission  of  discovery  had  he  not  enlisted  the  co-oper 
ation  and  influence  of  Francis  of  Calabria,  confessor  to 
Isabella,  the  queen  of  Spain,  and  a  member  of  the  Fran 
ciscan  order. 

It  was  this  Spanish  Franciscan  who  appealed  to  the 
queen  to  outfit  the  great  Genoese  for  his  daring  ex 
periment.  Then  the  first  and  most  influential  pro 
tector  in  Spain  of  the  great  Admiral  was  that  noble 
and  generous  Franciscan,  Perez  de  Marchena.  Eeturn- 
ing  from  his  first  wondrous  voyage  of  discovery,  Colum 
bus  obtained  from  Pope  Alexander  VI.  the  privilege  of 
selecting  missionaries  to  accompany  him  on  his  second 
voyage  to  America.  He  chose  several  Franciscans,  in 
cluding  Father  Perez,  the  astronomer,  and,  arriving  at 
Hispaniola,  now  the  Island  of  Haiti,  laid,  in  conjunc 
tion  with  the  Franciscans,  the  first  stone  of  the  city  of 
San  Domingo.  Here,  too,  came,  in  1505,  the  Franciscan 
Father  Eemi,  the  King  of  Scotland's  brother,  accompa 
nied  by  members  of  his  order,  who  established  for  the 
conversion  of  the  Indians  of  Hispaniola  and  those  of  the 
Antilles  the  monastery  and  headquarters  of  the  Holy 
Cross.  It  was  a  Franciscan  priest,  Jean  Bernard  Cas- 
tori  de  Todi,  the  astronomer,  who  offered  up  the  first 
mass  on  the  virgin  soil  of  America.  It  was  also  a  Fran 
ciscan  priest,  Jean  Berganon,  who  first  addressed  the 
Indians  in  their  own  language,  and  the  first  missionary 
to  die  and  be  buried  in  America  was  a  member  of  the 
order,  Father  Allesandro. 

Diega  de  Landa,  missionary  to  the  Quiches  of  Ta- 


BY  PATH  AND  TBAIL.  143 

basco,  and  then  Bishop  of  Yucatan  in  1573,  wrote  the 
History  of  Yucatan,  mastered  the  mysterious  Quiche  lan 
guage  and  deciphered  the  hieratic  Maya  alphabet,  was 
a  Franciscan.  He  left  us  the  key  to  some  of  the  strange 
inscriptions  on  the  monuments  of  Central  America.  He 
deciphered  the  weird  characters  on  the  monuments  of 
Mayapan  and  Chichin-Itza ;  but  for  him,  his  intelligence 
and  tireless  industry,  these  gravings  would  perhaps  re 
main  a  mystery  for  all  time,  like  the  Egyptian  hiero 
glyphics  before  the  discovery  of  the  Eosetta  stone  and 
the  magnificent  research  and  ingenuity  of  Champollion. 

Father  Pierre  Cousin,  a  French  Franciscan,  was  the 
first  priest  martyred  for  Christ  in  America,  and  the  first 
bishop  consecrated  for  America,  1511,  was  Garcias  de 
Predilla,  a  Franciscan,  who  built  his  cathedral  in  San 
Domingo.  But  I  am  straying  far  afield  and  I  call  back 
my  wandering  pen  to  California  and  the  southwest  of 
our  own  country. 

By  some  mysterious  centripetal  force  almost  all  the 
writings  on  the  Franciscans  of  California  converged  to 
ward  one  personality — Father  Junipero  Serra,  a  saintly 
priest.  Hanging  in  the  reception  room  of  the  ancient 
college  of  San  Fernando,  Mexico  City,  is  an  oil  painting 
of  the  gentle  priest  executed  one  hundred  and  sixty 
years  ago.  It  is  a  face  full  of  human  pathos,  of  tender 
ness,  of  spirituality:  this  painting  and  an  enlarged  da 
guerreotype  in  the  old  Franciscan  College  of  Santa  Bar 
bara,  Cal.,  are  all  that  remain  to  bring  back  the  form  and 
features  of  one  who  will  for  all  time  fill  a  conspicuous 
place  in  California  history.  Now,  good  and  saintly  as 
was  Father  Junipero,  and  great  and  many  as  are  the 
praises  sung  of  him,  he  was  not  superior,  indeed,  judged 
by  the  standard  of  the  world,  he  was  not  the  equal  of 


144  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

other  Franciscan  missionaries  of  the  southwest,  whose 
names  one  seldom  erer  hears.  If  the  crucifixion  of  the 
flesh,  with  its  appetites,  desires  and  demands;  if  great 
suffering  voluntarily  assumed  and  patiently  borne;  if 
fatigue,  hunger,  thirst  and  exposure  .endured  uncom 
plainingly  for  God  and  a  great  cause,  and  if  surrender 
ing  freely  life  itself,  for  the  uplifting  of  the  outcast  and 
the  accursed,  be  the  marks  of  heroic  sanctity  and  heroic 
men,  then  there  were  greater  saints  and  greater  men  on 
the  desert  missions  than  Junipero  Serra.  Alone,  away 
from  the  eye  and  the  applause  of  civilized  man,  these 
lonely  priests  in  desert  and  on  mountain  trod  the  wine 
press  of  the  fury  of  insult,  mockery  and  derision.  For 
weary  years  of  laborious  and  unceasing  sacrifice,  amid 
perils  as  fearful  as  ever  tried  the  heart  of  man,  they 
walked  the  furrow  to  the  martyr's  stake,  nor  cast  one 
halting,  lingering  look  behind.  Their  zeal,  their  courage, 
their  fidelity  to  duty  in  the  presence  of  eminent  warn 
ings  ;  their  fortitude  under  hunger,  weariness  and  exces 
sive  fatigue;  their  angelic  piety  and  purity  of  life,  and 
their  prodigious  courage  when  confronted  with  torture 
and  death,  have  built  on  the  lonely  desert  a  monument 
to  St.  Francis  and  to  heroic  Catholic  charity,  a  monu 
ment  which  will  endure  till  time  shall  be  no  more. 

Of  these  men  were  Fathers  Garces,  clubbed  to  death  by 
the  Yumas ;  Martin  de  Arbide,  burned  alive  by  the  Zunis ; 
Juan  Diaz,  tortured  by  the  Mojaves,  and  thirty  others, 
martyred  for  the  faith.  The  history  of  the  conversion 
and  civilization  of  the  Indians  of  the  California  coast, 
Arizona  and  New  Mexico  by  the  Franciscan  fathers, 
forms  one  of  the  most  brilliant  chapters  in  the  martyr- 
ology  and  confessorium  of  the  imperishable  Church  of 
God.  By  their  patience,  tact  and  kindness,  by  the  un- 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  145 

blemished  cleanliness  of  their  lives,  these  men  of  God 
won  the  confidence  and  affection  of  their  savage  flocks, 
lifted  them  unto  firm  earth,  Christianized  and  civilized 
them.  From  Cape  San  Lucas  to  San  Diego,  and  on  to 
San  Francisco  and  Los  Angeles,  all  over  Arizona,  Texas 
and  New  Mexico,  they  established  missions,  built  churches 
and  taught  the  tribes  to  cultivate  the  land.  They  gath 
ered  the  wandering  families  into  village  settlements, 
taught  them  horticulture  and  irrigation,  and  furnished 
them  seed  and  implements  of  agriculture.  They  intro 
duced  sheep  and  cattle,  planted  vineyards,  olive  and 
orange  groves,  and  made  of  these  human  wrecks  a  peace 
ful,  industrious  and  contented  people.  They  did  more. 
They  taught  these  men  and  women  of  unknown  race  and 
origin  how  to  break  and  shoe  horses,  to  carve  in  wood, 
to  mould  clay,  make  and  lay  tiles,  to  tan  hides  and  make 
shoes,  to  sing  and  play  on  musical  instruments,  to  make 
wine,  candles,  clothes,  ploughs  and  hats;  they  taught 
them  the  trades  of  the  cooper,  the  weaver,  the  saddler, 
the  blacksmith,  the  painter,  the  carpenter,  the  baker,  the 
miller,  the  rope  maker,  the  stone  cutter,  the  mason  and 
many  other  civilized  occupations.  Some  of  the  finer  arts 
taught  the  Indians  by  the  fathers  are  practiced  to-day  by 
the  members  of  the  tribes,  such,  for  example,  as  embroi 
dery  in  gold  and  silver  thread,  fancy  basket  making, 
moulding  and  annealing  pottery,  leather  carving,  lace 
and  drawn  work,  from  the  sale  of  which  to  curio  dealers 
and  visitors  the  Indians  draw  considerable  revenue. 
When,  in  1834,  a  band  of  Catholic  renegades,  calling 
themselves  the  Eepublic  of  Mexico,  broke  up  the  mis 
sions,  seized  upon  the  possessions  and  revenues  of  the 
monasteries  and  Christian  pueblos,  the  Indians  were  re- 


146  BY  PATH  AND  TBAIL. 

duced  to  beggary  and  became  human  derelicts,  outcasts 
and  thieves. 

Fray  Junipero  Serra,  founder  of  the  early  missions  of 
Southern  California,  was  a  Franciscan  priest,  whose  un 
blemished  life,  angelic  piety  and  habitual  tenderness  form 
a  splendid  pedestal  for  the  statue  of  admiration  erected 
to  his  memory  by  an  appreciative  public.  It  was  on  the 
morning  of  July  16,  1769,  that  Admiral  Galvez,  an  up 
right  man  and  a  brave  fighter,  together  with  Father 
Junipero  Serra  and  another  Franciscan  priest,  sailed 
into  the  bay,  landed,  and  founded  what  is  now  known  as 
"the  old  town,"  a  few  miles  away  from  the  present 
beautiful  city  of  San  Diego.  They  brought  with  them 
soldiers  and  laborers,  200  head  of  cattle,  a  full  supply 
of  seeds;  seeds  of  grain,  fruit,  vegetables  and  flowers, 
young  vines  and  bulbs,  with  an  abundance  of  tools  and 
implements. 

Thus  by  the  priests  of  the  Catholic  church  were  intro 
duced  into  California  the  horticultural,  pastoral  and 
agricultural  industries,  the  civilization  of  the  coast  tribes 
begun,  and  the  first  mission  opened.  The  founding  of  a 
mission  and  town  in  those  days  of  faith  was  an  affair 
of  very  great  importance.  When  the  men,  stock  and  sup 
plies  were  landed,  and  the  commander  of  the  expedition 
unfurled  the  standard  of  Spain,  all  heads  were  bared  and 
a  salute  fired.  Then  the  captain  strode  to  the  side  of 
the  floating  flag,  raised  on  high  three  times,  in  honor  of 
the  Holy  Trinity,  a  large  cross  carrying  the  Image  of 
the  Eedeemer.  At  once  the  commander,  soldiers  and 
men  went,  with  uncovered  heads,  to  their  knees,  bowed 
in  worship,  and,  rising,  chanted  the  "Te  Deum,"  a  hymn 
of  praise  to  Grod  and  in  His  Name,  and  in  the  name  of 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  147 

the  king  of  Spain,  took  peaceable  possession  of  the  coun 
try. 

Having  chosen  a  site  best  adapted  for  their  infant 
city,  the  priests  superintended  the  erection  of  an  altar 
under  the  shade  of  a  friendly  tree.  Father  Junipero, 
robed  in  the  vestments  he  had  brought  with  him  from 
his  monastery  of  San  Fernando,  Mexico  City,  celebrated 
the  first  mass  offered  up  in  California,  July  17,  1769,  and 
before  intoning  the  "Credo,"  feelingly  addressed  his 
companions.  Far  away  on  the  hilltops  the  naked  sav 
ages,  amazed  at  the  sight  of  the  ship  and  astounded  by 
the  report  of  the  guns,  gazed  with  awe  and  wonder  on 
the  white-robed  priest,  the  plumed  commander,  the  uni 
formed  soldiers,  the  horses  and  strangely  horned  cows 
and  sheep.  After  mass  the  Spaniards  formed  in  proces 
sion  and  moved  towards  the  bay,  whose  waters  the  priest 
solemnly  blessed,  and  in  honor  of  St.  James  of  Alcala, 
confirmed  the  name  "Puerto  (Bay)  de  San  Diego  de  Al 
cala"  bestowed  upon  the  harbor  by  Vizcaino,  November 
12,  1603. 

The  following  day  they  began  the  erection  of  a  fort 
and  church,  selecting  an  old  Indian  rancheria,  called 
Cosoy,  as  best  suited  for  the  site  of  a  Christian  pueblo. 

The  ruins  of  the  church  and  fort  are  here  to-day;  two 
stately  palms,  planted  by  the  fathers,  still  wave  and  nod 
with  every  cooling  breeze,  and  the  dear  old  bell,  that 
every  morning  called  the  Indians  to  prayers,  hangs  in 
its  rude  belfry,  outside  the  church,  reminding  the  money- 
Hiaking  and  aggressive  American  that  in  those  days 
men  worshiped  God  and  believed  in  a  hereafter.  In  Au 
gust,  1774,  they  changed  their  quarters  and  removed  the 
mission  and  settlement  six  miles  up  the  valley  to  a  place 
called  by  the  Indians  Mpaguay.  Here  they  built  a 


148  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

wooden  church  thatched  with  tule  rushes,  a  blacksmith 
shop,  storehouses  and  outbuildings  for  the  men. 

On  the  night  of  November  5,  1775,  the  mission  was 
attacked  by  the  savages.  No  intimation,  no  warning  or 
provocation  was  given.  They  swooped  down  upon  the 
unsuspecting  Spaniards,  slaughtered  Father  Jaume  and 
four  others  and  burned  the  buildings,  including  the 
church.  Father  Fustre,  who  fortunately  escaped  the 
massacre,  wrote  an  interesting  account  of  the  murder  of 
the  priest  and  the  destruction  of  the  mission.  The  fol 
lowing  year  the  mission  was  restored,  and,  in  1834,  when 
the  fathers  were  driven  out  by  Mexican  bandits,  calling 
themselves  the  Eepublic  of  Mexico,  the  Indians  were  all 
Christians  and  civilized. 

His  old  mission  of  "Our  Lady  of  Sorrows,"  at  San 
Diego,  was  destroyed  during  the  Mexican  war,  but  some 
crumbling  walls  yet  remain,  eloquent  memorials  of  the 
romantic  past.  The  few  acres  of  land  and  the  buildings 
on  them,  which  were  confiscated  and  sold  to  a  Mexican 
politician,  were  recovered  for  the  church  in  1856.  Beside 
the  dear  old  church  there  is  now  an  industrial  school, 
where  the  Indian  children,  from  the  reservations  of 
Southern  California,  are  trained  and  taught  by  the  Sis 
ters  of  St.  Joseph.  To  this  little  farm  belongs  the  dis 
tinction  of  protecting  the  first  olive  trees  planted  on  the 
continent  of  North  America.  Three  miles  above  the 
school,  the  old  dam  built  by  the  fathers  and  their  Indian 
converts  125  years  ago,  is  still  in  existence.  From  this 
dam,  through  a  deep  and  ugly  ravine,  they  carried  an 
aqueduct  of  tiles  imbedded  in  mortar  and  rubble  to  irri 
gate  their  gardens.  The  gnarled  old  orchard,  still  bear 
ing  its  fruit,  is  as  luscious  as  in  the  days  when  the  "old 
mission "  brands  of  pickled  olives  and  olive  oil  were  fa- 


BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL.  149 

mous  the  world  over.  Indeed,  they  are  famous  yet.  No 
body  wEo  is  anybody  visits  this  queenly  city  of  the  royal 
harbor  without  calling  at  the  old  mission  so  redolent  of 
pathetic  incident  and  romantic  enterprise.  The  friend 
ly  citizens  of  San  Diego  are  proud  of  the  historic  mis 
sion  of  "Our  Lady  of  Sorrows,"  and  of  their  beautiful 
harbor.  One  of  these  days,  in  the  extensive  park  whicn 
they  are  now  improving  and  beautifying,  they  will  place 
on  native  granite  pedestals,  two  statues — one  of  Viz 
caino,  who  entered  and  named  their  splendid  harbor,  and 
another  to  Padre  Junipero  Serra,  who  first  planted  the 
cross  of  Christianity  in  Southern  California. 

The  history  of  the  colonization  and  civilization  of  the 
California  coast  by  these  brave,  faithful  and  zealous 
priests,  is  in  striking  contrast  with  what  happened  in 
New  England  and  Virginia,  where  the  Indians  were  civ 
ilized  off  the  face  of  the  earth. 

After  establishing  the  San  Diego  mission,  Father 
Serra  pushed  northward  and  planted  a  chain  of  Chris 
tian  pueblos  one  day's  march  apart.  He  and  his  priest 
ly  companions  taught  their  converts  to  cultivate  and 
irrigate  the  land,  raise  grain,  fruits  and  vegetables,  and 
make  their  labor  profitable.  "I  do  not  know,"  writes 
Mr.  W.  E.  Curtis  in  the  Chicago  Record-Herald,  "any 
missionary  on  any  part  of  the  earth — Catholic  or  Pro 
testant — who  accomplished  more  good  for  his  fellow 
creatures.  The  heroism  of  Padre  Junipero  Serra,  his 
usefulness,  his  self-sacrifice,  his  piety  and  his  public 
services  for  the  church  and  humanity  entitle  him  to 
canonization. ' ' 

The  Franciscans,  in  time,  established  fifteen  missions, 
baptized  60,640  Indians  before  the  expulsion  of  the 
order,  introduced  horses,  cattle  and  sheep;  planted 


150  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

orange  and  olive  groves,  and  made  of  their  swarthy  con 
verts  a  peaceful  and  industrious  people.  Left  alone 
and  in  undisturbed  pursuit  of  their  apostolic  work,  the 
fathers  would  in  time  have  converted  and  civilized  all 
the  tribes  of  the  Pacific  coast  and  the  Southwest.  From 
the  day  they  opened  the  first  mission  to  the  Indians,  until 
the  confiscation  of  their  property,  in  1834,  the  fathers 
met  with  opposition  and  discouragement.  They  succeed 
ed  in  conquering  the  hostility  of  the  savages,  eradicating 
their  foul  superstitions  and  winning  them  to  a  Christian 
and  a  clean  life,  but  their  virtues,  self-denial  and  heroic 
charity  failed  to  subdue  the  cupidity  and  avarice  of  the 
founders  of  an  illegitimate  republic. 

From  his  death  bed  in  his  little  monastery  in  Mon 
terey,  the  saintly  priest  Junipero  Serra  asked  his  breth 
ren  to  beg  from  God  for  more  help  in  the  desolate  wil 
derness.  On  the  night  of  August  28,  1784,  he  was  dying, 
and  his  last  words  were:  "Pray  ye,  therefore,  the  Lord 
of  the  harvest  that  He  send  laborers  into  His  vineyard. ' ' 


BOOK  III. 


IN  THE  LAND  OF  THE  PAPAGOES 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

A  LAND  OF  SCENIC  WONDERS. 

t 

After  thirty  days'  traveling  by  train  and  burro, 
through  Sonora  and  this  extraordinary  land,  I  arrived 
here  last  night,  filled  with  amazement  and  admiration 
for  the  wonderful  work  of  God  made  manifest  in  the 
strange  configuration  of  this  land  and  in  the  marvels 
wrought  by  the  hand  of  time.  Dante  Aligherie,  when  he 
breathed  his  last  in  the  picturesque  capital  of  the  Exar 
chate,  died  560  years  too  soon.  If  he  were  living  to-day 
and  travelled  across  this  land  of  wonders,  he  would  have 
seen  upon  the  earth  a  region  where  Purgatory,  Hell  and 
Heaven  had  conspired  to  produce  a  bewildering  viascope 
of  all  that  is  weird,  terrible  and  awe-inspiring,  side  by 
side  with  the  beautiful,  the  marvelous  and  romantic.  With 
the  possible  exception  of  Sonora,  in  the  Republic  of  Mex 
ico,  to  which  geographically  and  ethnographically  Ari 
zona  belonged,  there  is  not  on  the  continent  of  America, 
perhaps  not  in  the  world,  a  land  as  full  to  repletion  with 
all  that  is  so  fascinating  in  nature  and  startling  to  man. 

Only  a  few  months  ago,  a  sailing  ship  from  Honolulu 
reported  that  the  lava  from  Mount  Matatutu,  then  in 
active  eruption  on  the  Island  of  Savaii,  had  covered 
thirty  square  miles,  while  in  places  the  flowing  stream 
was  200  feet  high,  and  that  in  a  part  of  the  island  a  river 
of  lava  twelve  miles  wide  was  rushing  to  the  ocean.  The 
tale  was  laughed  down  and  ridiculed  in  San  Francisco, 
wEere  the  captain  of  the  ship  made  his  report.  Yet  here, 
almost  on  the  boundary  line  of  California,  there  are  in 
disputable,  positive  and  visible  proofs  of  a  volcanic 


154  BY  PATH  AND  TEAIL. 

vomit  compared  to  which  the  Matatutu  discharge  is  but 
an  intestinal  disturbance. 

The  San  Francisco  mountain,  13,000  feet  high,  on  the 
northwestern  edge  of  Arizona,  is  one  of  the  most  beauti 
ful  mountains  in  America.  At  some  period,  geologically 
recent,  it  was  the  focus  of  an  igneus  commotion  of  un- 
equaled  duration  and  violence.  It  poured  out  rivers  and 
lakes  of  lava,  which  covered  the  land  for  two  hundred 
square  miles  and  raised  it  in  places  500  feet.  This  state 
ment  may  stagger  belief,  but  any  one  who  leaves  the 
Santa  Fe  at  Ash  Fork  and  follows  the  trail  to  the  Hupais 
village  of  Ave  Supais,  and  begins  the  descent  of  Cataract 
Canyon,  may  verify  for  himself  the  enormous  depth  of 
this  unprecedented  flow. 

Eeturning  to  Ash  Fork,  when  the  sun  is  declining  and 
the  sky  flecked  with  clouds,  the  same  man  will  see  a 
sunset  impossible  of  description,  paralyzing  the  genius 
of  a  Paul,  Loraine  and  the  brush  of  a  Turner.  Then  the 
heavens  are  bathed  in  a  lurid  blood  color,  in  purple  and 
saffron,  or  gleam  with  vivid  sheen  of  molten,  burnished 
gold,  when  a  falling  cataract  of  fiery  vermilion  rests 
upon  the  purple  peaks  and  ridges  of  the  western  moun 
tains.  I  know  not  any  land  where  the  full  majesty  of 
the  text  of  the  inspired  writer  is  more  luminously  pres 
ent  than  here  in  this  region  of  wonders.  "The  heavens 
declareth  the  glory  of  God  and  the  firmament  showeth 
His  handiwork." 

East  of  the  Missouri  river  this  is  an  unknown  land, 
even  to  the  well-informed  American.  Wealthy  and  pre 
sumedly  educated  citizens  of  the  East  spend  millions 
annually  sightseeing  in  Europe  and  Egypt,  when  here, 
within  their  borders,  is  a  land  where  mysterious  and 
pre-historic  races  dwell,  where  nature  and  nature's  God 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  155 

have  wrought  incredible  marvels  unlike  anything  seen 
elsewhere  upon  the  earth,  and  of  which  the  people  seem 
to  have  no  appreciation.  The  hills  and  lakes  of  Switz 
erland,  the  Alps  and  Appenines,  to  which  thousands, 
year  after  year,  go  from  America  ostensibly  to  admire 
the  configurations  and  towering  heights  of  these  histor 
ically  famous  mountains,  can  offer  nothing  to  the  eye  or 
to  the  imagination  to  be  compared  to  the  natural  won 
ders  of  their  own  land  and  of  which  they  appear  to  be 
unconscious. 

Nowhere  may  there  be  found  such  extensive  areas  of 
arid  deserts,  crossed  and  recrossed  in  every  direction  by 
lofty  mountains  of  strange  formation,  as  in  this  com 
paratively  unknown  region.  Here  are  fathomless  can 
yons,  dizzy  crags  and  cloud-piercing  peaks  and  a  vast 
array  of  all  the  contradictions  possible  in  topography. 
There  are  broad  stretches  of  desert,  where  the  winds 
raise  storms  of  dust  and  whirl  cyclones  of  sand,  carrying 
death  to  man  and  beast.  Here  are  to  be  found  dismal  ra 
vines,  horrent  abysses  and  startling  canyons,  in  whose 
gloomy  depths  flow  streams  of  water  pure  and  clear  as 
ever  rippled  through  the  pages  of  Cervantes.  Here  are 
the  cells  of  the  cliff-dwellers,  the  burrows  of  the  trog 
lodytes,  or  pre-historic  cave-men,  the  ruins  of  the  ancient 
pueblo  towns,  and  traces  of  pre-Columbian  tribes  who 
have  gone  down  amid  the  fierce  conflicts  of  tribal  wars 
and  have  disappeared  from  off  the  earth. 

Darwin,  Huxley  and  Maupas  are  welcome  to  their 
theories  accounting  for  the  origin  of  Man  and  his  expan 
sion  from  the  brute  to  a  civilized  being,  but  my  life 
among  and  my  experience  with  savages  have  convinced 
me  that  the  territory  separating  the  civilized  from  the 
savage  man  could  never  be  crossed  by  the  savage  un- 


156  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

assisted  by  a  civilized  guide,  while  all  history  proves  that 
races  at  one  time  in  possession  of  civilization  have 
passed  over  that  territory  and  descended  into  the  gloomy 
depths  of  savagery,  where  many  of  them  yet  remain.  In 
Arizona,  at  least,  it  was  impossible  for  the  Indian  to  lift 
himself  out  of  his  degradation,  for  when  he  began  his 
rude  cultivation  of  the  land,  the  ferocious  mountain 
tribes  swooped  down  upon  him  and  drove  him  into  the 
desert  or  to  the  inaccessible  cliffs. 

Following  the  instinct  of  self-preservation,  he  built 
his  stone  hut  on  lofty  ledges  or  scooped  from  the  friable 
mountain  side,  fifty,  one  hundred,  two  hundred  feet  in 
air,  a  cave  which  served  for  an  observatory  and  a  refuge 
for  his  wife  and  children.  With  a  rope  ladder,  twisted 
from  the  viscera  of  the  grey  wolf,  or  the  hide  of  the 
mountain  lion,  he  climbed  down  from  his  lofty  perch,  re 
turning  with  food  and  water  for  his  miserable  family. 
Thus  began  the  now  famous  "cliff-dwellings,"  which 
seventy  years  ago  many  of  our  learned  antiquarians 
thought  were  the  dens  of  an  extinct  species,  half  animal 
and  half  man.  Seeing  and  knowing  nothing  of  the  rope 
which  was  always  lifted  by  the  woman  when  the  man  was 
at  home  or  on  the  hunt,  the  deduction  was  quite  natural 
that  no  human  being  could  scale  the  face  of  the  almost 
perpendicular  cliff. 

The  Moqui  Indians  still  inhabit  these  strange  rock 
lairs  on  the  northern  side  of  the  Colorado  Chiquito. 
There  is  no  tribe  of  aborigines  left  upon  the  earth,  there 's 
no  region  of  the  world,  more  deserving  of  examination 
than  the  Moquis  and  the  mysterious  land  they  occupy. 
Here  at  the  village  of  Huaipi,  on  a  mesa  or  table  land 
surrounded  by  sand  dunes  and  amorphous  boulders  of 
old  red  sandstone,  is  held  every  second  year  the  mystic 


— Copyright  by  Underwood  &  Underwood,  New  York. 

MOQUI  LOVERS ;  CLIFF  PEOPLE. 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  157 

rite  of  the  " Feast  of  the  Snake/7  when  the  tribal  medi 
cine  men,  or  shamans,  holding  in  their  mouths  and  fond 
ling  venomous  rattlesnakes,  dance  around  and  through 
the  sacred  fire,  and  rushing  wildly  through  the  assembled 
crowd  of  women  and  children,  disappear  behind  the  estu- 
fas  and  liberate  the  reptiles.  These  Moqui  dwellings  and 
the  Zuni  pueblos  of  New  Mexico  are  the  oldest  continu 
ously  inhabited  structures  in  America  and  probably  re 
main  more  nearly  in  their  original  state  than  those  of 
any  other  aboriginal  people  in  North  or  South  America. 

For  ethnological  study  it  is  hardly  possible  to  overes 
timate  the  value  of  these  strange  people — the  Moquis 
and  the  Zunis.  In  the  accounts  of  their  early  explora 
tions  the  Spanish  missionary  fathers  found  from  eighty 
to  a  hundred  cells  of  these  pueblo  and  cliff  dwellers  in 
habited  in  Sonora,  Chihuahua  and  Arizona.  Clearly  the 
whole  of  New  Mexico,  Arizona  and  northern  Mexico  was 
occupied  by  these  semi-civilized  people,  who  lived  in 
caves,  stone  and  adobe  houses,  cultivated  the  land  with 
stone  hoes,  and  irrigated  it  with  water  brought  in  chan 
nels  from  the  nearest  river.  Centuries  before  the  advent 
of  the  Spaniards,  the  decline  of  the  race  began,  and  event 
ually  would  have  ended  in  total  savagery  if  the  European 
had  not  entered  upon  the  scene.  Internecine  wars, 
drought,  pestilence,  and,  above  all,  the  coming  into  the 
land  of  the  fierce  Apaches,  or  Dinnes,  and  their  many 
predatory  and  annihilating  raids,  wore  down  the  ancient 
race  and  threatened  their  extinction.  All  the  adobe  and 
stone  ruins,  all  the  remains  of  ditches  and  canals  from 
all  over  the  river  lands  of  New  Mexico  and  Arizona,  are 
the  relics  of  these  strange  people. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  enter  into  a  disquisition  on 
the  origin  or  migration  of  the  race.  I  may,  however, 


158  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

add  that  in  the  common  use  of  adobe,  for  building  mate 
rial,  in  the  plain  walls,  rising  to  a  height  of  many  stories, 
in  the  architecture  of  their  terraced  structures,  absence 
of  doors  in  the  lower  stories,  the  ascent  by  external  lad 
ders  to  the  higher,  their  buildings  were  altogether  unlike 
any  found  in  Mexico,  Yucatan  or  Central  America.  In 
the  absence  of  arched  ceilings,  of  overlapping  blocks,  of 
all  architectural  decorations,  of  idols,  temples  and  build 
ings  for  religious  rites,  of  burial  mounds  and  mummies 
or  human  remains,  rock  inscriptions  and  miscellaneous 
relics,  the  monuments  of  the  'Zunis  and  Moquis  present 
no  analogies  with  the  Mayas,  Quiches  or  any  known  race 
of  people  now  existing. 

Eeturning  from  this  digression,  let  me  continue  my 
explorations.  Here  in  this  land  of  wonders  is  the  Pet 
rified  Forest,  where  are  to  be  seen  trunks  of  giant  trees 
over  ten  feet  in  diameter  and  a  hundred  feet  long, 
changed  from  wood  into  carnelian,  precious  jasper  and 
banded  agate.  Here  are  hundreds  of  tons — a  riotous 
outpouring — of  Chalcedony,  topaz,  agate  and  onyx,  pro 
tected  from  vandals  by  decree  of  congress.  Here  also 
is  the  Cohino  Forest,  through  which  one  may  ride  for 
five  days  and  find  no  water  unless  it  be  the  rainy  season. 
There  are  places  here  where  the  ground  is  covered  with 
pure  baking  soda,  which  at  times  rises  in  a  cloud  of  irri 
tating  dust,  and  when  driven  by  the  wind  excoriates  the 
nostrils,  throat,  eyes  and  ears.  There  are  depressions 
near  the  mouth  of  the  Virgin  Eiver,  where  slabs  of  salt, 
two  or  three  feet  thick  and  clear  as  lake  ice,  may  be  cut ; 
and  mirages  of  deceiving  bodies  of  water  so  realistic  that 
even  the  old  desert  traveler,  parched  with  thirst,  is  some 
times  lured  to  his  death. 

In  this  territory  is  Mogollon  Mountain,  whose  sides 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  159 

and  summit  are  covered  with  a  forest  of  giant  pine 
trees.  At  some  time  in  the  remote  past,  nature,  when  in 
an  experimental  mood,  fashioned  it,  casting  the  huge 
freak  to  one  side,  and,  laughing  aloud,  left  it  unfinished 
in  the  lonely  desert.  It  is  an  unexampled  unheaval,  a 
marvelous  oddity,  from  whose  western  rim  one  looks 
down  3,000  feet  into  the  Tonto  abyss,  a  weird  depth, 
where  ravines,  arroyos,  angular  hills  and  volcanic  set 
tlings  conspire  to  produce  one  of  the  roughest  and 
strangest  spots  on  the  earth's  surface. 


CHAPTEE  XIX. 

VEGETATION  OF  THE  DESEKT. 

I  cannot  resist  the  temptation  of  enlarging  and  dwell 
ing  upon,  what  I  may  term,  the  natural  miracles  of  this 
extraordinary  region.  North  of  Yuma,  on  the  Colorado, 
there  are  hundreds  of  acres  of  mosaic  pavement  fash 
ioned  from  minute  cubes  of  jasper,  carnelian  and  agate, 
a  flooring  of  tiny  pebbles  so  hard  and  polished  that,  when 
swept  by  the  wind,  is  as  visibly  compact  and  regular  as 
if  each  cube  was  set  in  place  by  an  artisan  and  forced 
down  by  a  roller.  At  times  this  floor  of  precious  stones 
is  entirely  hidden  by  the  sand,  then  a  fierce  desert  wind 
enters  and  sweeps  it  clean.  Nowhere,  unless  it  be  the 
Giant's  Causway,  Ireland,  have  I  seen  stones  laid  with 
such  mathematical  accuracy. 

In  this  land  of  contradictions  is  the  Painted  Desert, 
with  its  fantastic  surface  of  ocherous  earth  and  varieties 
of  marls  rivalling  the  tints  and  colors  of  a  large  palette. 
Here,  in  this  weird  and  singular  territory,  was  opened 
by  the  Spaniards  the  now  exhausted  and  abandoned 
mines  of  the  Silver  King  and  the  Plancha  de  la  Plata, 
where  lumps  of  virgin  silver  weighing  2,000  pounds  were 
discovered,  and  the  Salero,  where  in  Spanish  times  the 
padre,  who  had  charge  of  the  little  mission,  wishing  to 
entertain  with  proper  respect  his  bishop,  who  was  paying 
his  first  visit  to  the  camp,  discovered  when  the  table  was 
set  that  there  were  no  salt  cellars.  Calling  two  of  his 
Indian  neophytes,  he  ordered  them  to  dig  ore  from  the 
mine  and  hammer  it  into  a  solid  silver  basin,  which  he 
placed  on  the  table,  garnished  with  roses  and  ferns,  and 


162  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

presented  to  the  bishop  when  he  was  leaving  for  Du- 
rango,  his  episcopal  see. 

In  1870  the  last  herd  of  wild  horses  was  rounded  up 
in  Arizona,  and  here,  too,  corraled  like  the  horses,  and 
at  about  the  same  time,  are  the  remnants  of  the  Apaches, 
who,  with  no  weapons,  save  bows  and  arrows,  lance, 
knife  and  war  club,  defied  for  250  years  the  fighting  men 
of  Spain  and  the  United  States. 

The  Standard  Iron  Company  is  now  tunneling  earth 
near  the  Diabolo  Canyon  in  search  of  the  greatest  me 
teor  ever  heard  of  by  meteorologists.  When  this  com 
posite  visitor  struck  the  earth  it  cut  a  channel  600  feet 
deep  and  nearly  a  mile  in  length.  The  land  for  miles 
around  was,  and  is  yet,  covered  with  fragments  of  this 
star  rock.  Some  of  these  pieces  weighed  many  tons,  and 
when  broken  up  and  reduced,  ran  high  in  valuable  min 
erals.  The  size  of  this  meteor  is  said  to  be  enormous, 
and  judging  from  the  value  of  the  ore  scattered  around 
the  great  depression,  the  minerals  embosomed  in  the 
meteor  will  amount  to  many  millions  of  dollars.  Distin 
guished  mineralogists  of  Europe  and  America  have  ex 
pressed  a  wish  to  be  present  when  the  meteoric  wonder 
is  uncovered.  Here,  also,  solidly  perched  on  the  breast 
of  a  small  volcanic  hill,  is  the  only  desert  laboratory  in 
the  world.  This  hill  projects  from  the  base  of  a  rugged 
mountain  range,  known  as  the  Tucson,  and  was  selected 
by  the  Spaniards  as  a  site  on  which  to  build  a  blockhouse 
and  observatory  in  the  days  when  the  Apaches  terrified 
southern  Arizona.  From  the  crest  of  this  volcanic 
mount  one  may  sweep  a  circular  horizon  within  which 
repose  in  awful  majesty  fifteen  ranges  of  mountains, 
stretching  southward  into  Mexico,  northward  into  Cen 
tral  Arizona,  and  extending  toward  the  west  far  into 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  163 

California.  Within  this  circle  the  Spaniards  were  mak 
ing  history  when  the  states  of  the  East  were  a 
wilderness,  and  New  York  had  as  yet  no  place  on  the 
map  of  America.  The  mountains  and  the  deserts  remain 
as  they  were  when  the  Spanish  priest  Marco,  of  Nizza, 
in  1539,  crossed  them  on  his  way  to  the  Moqui  towns  of 
Quivera.  The  vegetation  even  has  undergone  no  change, 
for  here,  all  around,  and  before  you,  are  the  giant  Sua- 
haros,  or  Candelabrum  cacti,  the  ocotilla,  the  Spanish 
dagger  plant,  with  bayonets  all  a-bristle,  the  palo  verde, 
the  mesquite,  prickly  pear,  sagebrush,  and  all  the  won 
derful  varieties  of  desert  flora  for  which  the  Arizona 
deserts  are  notorious. 

The  professor  of  botany  in  the  University  of  Arizona 
tells  me  there  are  in  Arizona  3,000  varieties  of  flower- 
carrying  plants,  and  300  different  kinds  of  grasses.  With 
the  exception  of  the  verbena  and  a  few  others,  all  the 
indigenous  flowers  are  odorless,  owing,  it  is  said,  to  the 
absence  of  moisture  in  the  air.  All  desert  plants  are 
protected  against  the  greed  or  hunger,  or,  let  us  say, 
wanton  destruction  of  man  and  animal,  by  spines  or 
thorns.  More  than  680  varieties  of  the  cactus  alone  have 
been  discovered,  catalogued  and  classified.  All  deserts 
have  a  botany  of  their  own  and  a  flora  of  infinite  possi 
bilities  off  value,  and  in  the  deserts  of  Arizona  have  been 
found  plants  of  great  medicinal  value,  many  of  them 
with  unique  and  interesting  characteristics.  It  is  a  very 
curious  fact  that  the  only  varieties  of  the  cactus  without 
thorns  known  to  exist  in  this  region,  are  found  growing  in 
rock  projections  and  ledges  beyond  the  reach  of  animals. 
This  was  explained  to  me  on  the  theory  that,  at  some  time 
in  the  past,  this  kind  of  cactus  was  common  enough  in 
the  mountains,  but  that  gophers,  rabbits  and  other  des- 


164  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

ert  animals  had  long  ago  consumed  all  that  could  be 
reached.  In  "Wild  West"  books,  and  even  in  profes 
sedly  historical  novels,  one  reads  occasionally  of  this  and 
that  family  or  clan  of  Indians  perishing  of  hunger  or 
thirst.  It  is  impossible  for  a  normally  healthy  savage 
to  die  of  hunger  or  perish  from  thirst  on  the  Arizona  des 
erts.  The  white  man?  Yes,  and  often,  the  Indian  never. 
It  is  a  case  of  God  tempering  the  wind  to  the  shorn  lamb, 
or  fitting  the  back  to  the  burden.  Under  the  thorns  of 
every  variety  of  cactus  there  is  refreshing,  nourishing 
and  indeed,  palatable  food.  The  desert  and  mountain 
tribes  knew  this  from  immemorial  times,  and  until  they 
were  confined  to  the  reservations,  cactus  food  formed  a 
large  part  of  their  ordinary  diet.  They  had  a  way  of 
their  own  of  stripping  the  needles  from  the  plant,  reach 
ing  the  pulp  and  eating  it  cooked  or  uncooked. 

There  are  many  fruit  and  berry  bearing  cacti,  and 
these  fruits  and  berries  were  gathered  in  season,  eaten 
raw  or  boiled,  and  from  which  a  delicious  syrup  or  juice 
was  extracted,  and  an  intoxicating  drink,  called  ' '  chaca, ' ' 
distilled.  The  pitayha  and  suaharo  cacti  grow  to  the 
height  of  twenty  and  thirty  feet,  and  yield,  when  prop 
erly  tapped,  from  ten  to  twenty-gallons  of  pure  drinking 
water.  All  desert  plants  contain  a  large  amount  of  mois 
ture,  and  the  professors  of  the  Carnegie  desert  labora 
tory  are  now  trying  to  find  out  how  these  desert  plants, 
especially  the  cacti,  extract  water  from  a  parched  and 
sandy  soil,  and  moisture  from  hot  air.  There  is  a  cac 
tus,  christened  by  the  early  Spaniards,  the  "barrel," 
which  is  75  per  cent  water,  and,  strange  to  say,  thrives 
best  in  hopelessly  barren  lands  in  which  no  water  is 
found  within  hundreds  of  miles,  and  on  which  no  rain 
ever  falls. 


BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL.  165 

The  desert  laboratory  for  the  study  of  the  flora  of 
barren  lands,  is  the  property  of  the  Carnegie  Institute 
at  Washington,  and  was  founded  by  Mr.  F.  V.  Coville, 
of  the  United  States  Department  of  Agriculture,  a^d 
Dr.  D.  Trembly  MacDougal,  who  was  for  years  assist 
ant  director  of  the  New  York  Botanical  Garden.  Dr. 
MacDougal  is  now  here  in  charge  of  the  department  of 
botanical  research.  In  its  specialty  of  purpose  there  is 
only  one  other  institution  in  existence,  even  collaterally 
related  to  this  desert  laboratory,  and  that  is  the  college 
of  science  established  lately  in  Greenland  by  the  govern 
ment  of  Denmark,  for  researches  in  arctic  regions  and 
the  study  of  the  flora  and  fauna  of  the  far  north.  This, 
desert  laboratory,  under  expert  botanists,  will  include  in 
its  scope,  the  physiographic  conditions  of  notable  inter 
est  in  the  two  great  desert  areas  of  western  America,, 
deliminated  by  the  geologist,  the  botanist,  and  the  geog 
rapher,  and  designated  as  the  Sonora — Nevada  desert 
and  the  Sinaloa — Chihuahua  region  of  sand.  These  two 
regions  embrace  large  sections  of  Idaho,  Utah,  Oregon, 
Colorado,  Washington,  Nevada,  CaJifornia,  Arizona, 
Baja  California,  Sonora  and  Sinaloa.  In  this  classifica 
tion  the  beds  of  many  ancient  lakes  are  included,  and 
with  them  the  yet  existing  Great  Salt  Lake.  Dr.  Mac 
Dougal  informs  me  that  notable  features  in  this  vast 
body  are  the  Snake  river  desert  of  Idaho,  the  Ealston 
sand  lands  of  Nevada,  the  sage  fields  of  Washington,  the 
lava  beds  of  Oregon,  Death  Valley,  the  Mojave  Desert, 
the  Colorado  Desert,  the  Painted  Desert  in  Arizona  and 
New  Mexico,  the  Salton  bed  and  the  great  Sonora  desert 
of  Mexico.  In  the  Californias — Southern  and  Lower — 
the  desert  vegetation  and  that  of  the  coast  lands  meet,, 
but,  except  in  rare  instances,  never  assimilate.  I  was 


166  BY  PATH  AND  TEAIL. 

surprised  to  hear  from  the  distinguished  professor,  as 
without  doubt  you  will  be  to  read,  that  if  the  deserts  of 
the  earth  could  be  brought  into  one  area  they  would 
form  a  continent  larger  than  all  of  North  America.  The 
wonderful  and  peculiar  vegetation  of  the  deserts  has 
time  and  again  invited  and  received  the  attention  of 
learned  botanists,  but  not  until  the  founding  of  this  Car 
negie  laboratory  was  any  systematic  and  continuous 
study  made  of  desert  plant  life.  The  assistant  in  charge 
of  the  botanical  department  corresponds  with  the  famous 
botanists  of  the  world,  and  is  daily  mailing  to  and  re 
ceiving  specimens  of  desert  flowers  and  plants  from  all 
parts  of  Asia,  Africa  and  Australia. 

It  may  interest  my  readers  to  learn  that,  in  the  val 
ley  of  the  Salt  Eiver,  in  Arizona,  the  United  States  gov 
ernment  reclamation  service  has  well  under  way  one 
of  the  most  remarkable  engineering  enterprises  for  the 
irrigation  of  desert  lands  ever  undertaken.  Before  a 
hole  was  drilled  for  the  actual  work  in  this  almost  inac 
cessible  quarter  of  the  Salt  Eiver  Canyon,  a  wagon  road 
twenty-live  miles  long  had  to  be  blasted  from  the  side 
of  the  fearful  gorge.  Fifteen  miles  of  this  road  pre 
sented  almost  insurmountable  difficulties,  for  it  had  to 
be  run  through  the  wildest  and  most  precipitous  portions 
of  the  awesome  canyons.  Then  began  the  herculean  task 
of  preparation  for  controlling  the  turbulent  waters  of 
the  river,  which  in  the  late  spring  become  a  rushing  tor 
rent.  In  a  narrow  part  of  this  canyon  the  men,  under 
expert  hydrographic  and  civil  engineers,  are  now  build 
ing  a  wall  of  solid  masonry,  which,  when  completed,  will 
rise  to  a  height  of  270  feet.  It  will  inclose  a  lake  of  stor- 
aged  water  twenty-five  miles  long  and  200  feet  deep. 
Sluices  and  canals  will  carry  water  from  this  artificial 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  167 

lake  to  the  parched  lands.  This  government  contract 
will  cost  $6,000,000,  and  will  reclaim  200,000  acres  of  arid 
land.  At  the  southern  level  of  the  lake  stands  the  town 
of  Roosevelt,  not  very  old,  as  you  may  judge  by  the 
name,  but  substantially  built.  Well,  when  the  reservoir 
is  finished  and  the  waters  are  about  to  be  let  in,  ^Eoose 
velt  must  go." 


CHAPTER  XX. 

TEMPLES  OF  THE  DESEBT. 

Among  all  the  mission  churches  built  by  the  Spanish 
missionary  fathers,  within  the  present  limits  of  the 
United  States,  extending  from  the  meridian  of  San  An 
tonio,  Tex.,  to  the  Presidio  of  San  Francisco,  and  em 
bracing  such  examples  as  San  Gabriel,  outside  of  Los 
Angeles,  and  the  mission  church  of  San  Jose,  near  Sari 
Diego,  built  by  Padre  Junipero  Serra — of  whom  Bret 
Harte  and  Helen  Jackson  wrote  so  sympathetically — 
there  is  not  one  superior  architecturally,  and  there  are 
few  equal  to  San  Xavier  del  Bac.  the  church  of  the  gen 
tle  Papagoes.  The  drive  from  Tucson  to  the  mission  is 
nine  miles.  To  your  left,  within  sound  of  its  gurgling 
waters,  flows  the  Santa  Cruz,  that  for  400  years  has 
filled  a  prominent  place  in  the  real  and  legendary  history 
of  Arizona.  Springing  from  the  floor  of  the  valley,  the 
Tuscon  range  of  mountains  and  hills  rise  majestically 
to  the  right,  and  stretch  southward  to  an  interminable 
distance.  Far  away  to  the  southwest — miles  and  miles 
away — the  "Twin  Buttes,"  inflated  with  copper,  tower 
in  imperial  isolation.  Five  miles  from  Tucson  the  road 
suddenly  rises,  and  at  once  the  bell-shaped  dome  and 
the  Moorish  towers  of  the  church  of  the  Papagoes  break 
the  sky  line  to  the  south.  Another  mile,  and  we  enter 
the  reservation  and  are  received  with  an  infernal  disson 
ance  of  barks,  snarls  and  growls  from  a  yelping  pack  of 
unpedigreed  curs  of  low  estate.  The  road  winds  through 
and  around  wikiups  and  cabins,  past  the  humble  grave 
yard  where  heaves  the  turf  in  many  a  mouldering  heap, 


170  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

and  where  a  forest  of  plain  wooden  crosses  records  the 
sublime  hope  and  faith  of  the  vanishing  Papago.  Before 
entering  the  church,  I  called  to  pay  my  respects  and 
tender  the  tribute  of  my  admiration  to  the  three  sisters 
of  the  community  of  St.  Joseph,  who  for  years  have  de 
voted  their  lives  to  the  mental  and  spiritual  uplifting  of 
the  Indian  children  of  the  reservation.  I  found  the  class 
rooms  clean,  a  plentiful  supply  of  blackboards  an/i  mural 
tablets,  and  the  walls  ornamented  with  sacred  and  other 
pictures.  The  children  were  almost  as  dark  as  negroes, 
their  coal-black  hair  falling  over  their  shoulders  and 
their  snake-like  eyes  piercing  and  searching  me  as  if  I 
were  an  enemy.  What  clothes  they  wore  were  clean,  and 
I  found  them  as  intelligent  and  as  far  advanced  in  their 
elementary  studies  as  the  children  of  white  parents. 
"Sister,"  I  said,  "how  often  do  you  have  mass  here?" 

"Twice  a  month,  sir." 

"And  in  the  meantime?" 

"In  the  meantime  we  are  alone  with  the  Blessed  Sac 
rament.  ' ' 

"Oh,  the  bishop  then  permits  the  Reservation '  in 
your  oratory." 

"Yes,  without  the  Blessed  Sacrament  we  could  not 
live  here.  We  three  are  alone.  We  have  no  amusements, 
no  society,  and,  outside  of  ourselves,  no  companionship. 
We  do  our  own  cooking,  our  own  washing,  our  own 
scrubbing,  and  teach  these  eighty-five  children  six  hours  a 
day  and  give  them  an  hour's  religious  instruction  on 
Sunday.  We  also  teach  some  of  them  music,  and  all  of 
them  singing." 

I  shook  hands  with  these  heroic  and  estimable  ladies, 
thanked  them  for  their  courtesies,  and  as  I  passed  across 
the  "patio"  to  enter  the  church,  some  lines  from  the 


— Copyright  by  Underwood  &  Underwood,  New  York. 
PAPAGO   "WIKIUP." 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  171 

exquisite  poem,  "The  Sister    of    Charity, "  by  Gerald 
Griffin,  unbidden,  visited  by  memory: 

"Behold  her,  ye  worldly,  behold  her,  ye  vain, 
Who  shrink  from  the  pathway  of  virtue  and  pain; 
Who  give  up  to  pleasure  your  nights  and  your  days, 
Forgetful  of  service,  forgetful  of  praise." 

Before  we  enter  the  sacred  and  historic  fane,  let  us 
go  back  some  centuries,  and  from  the  shadowy  past 
evoke  the  dead  that  we  may  learn  from  them  something 
of  the  early  days  of  this  holy  place.  The  first  white  man, 
of  whom  we  have  any  record,  to  visit  and  preach  to  the 
Pimas  and  Papagoes  of  Southern  Arizona,  was  that 
great  Jesuit  missionary  and  explorer,  Father  Eusibio 
Francisco  Kino.  In  1691  he  left  the  Yaquis  of  Sonora 
on  his  wonderful  missionary  tour,  and  on  foot  crossed 
the  deserts,  preaching  to  the  Apaches,  Yumas  and  Mari- 
copas  on  the  way.  Late  in  October,  of  the  same  year, 
he  entered  the  tribal  lands  of  the  Pimas  and  Papagoes, 
and  from  the  Pima  town  on  the  Santa  Cruz,  now  St. 
Xavier  del  Bac,  a  deputation  was  sent  to  escort  him  to 
their  village.  When  the  priest  entered  the  village,  Coro, 
chief  of  the  Pimas  and  his  warriors  were  parading  and 
dancing  around  the  scalps  of  Apaches,  whom  they  had 
defeated  in  battle,  and  before  whose  dark  and  reeking 
hair  they  were  now  shouting  their  paens  of  victory. 
Mange,  the  historian  of  the  Pimas — of  whom  the  Papa- 
goes  are  a  branch — says  that  the  morning  after  Kino's 
arrival,  Coro  paraded  before  him  1,200  warriors  in  all 
the  glory  of  war  bonnets,  bright  blankets,  head  dresses 
of  eagle  feathers,  scalp  shirts,  shields  of  deer  hide,  and 
gloaming  lances.  Father  Kino  remained  here  two  or 
three  weeks,  teaching  and  instructing  the  tribe  in  the 


172  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

Christian  religion,  and  when  about  to  leave,  marked  on 
his  chart  the  Pima  valley  and  gave  to  it  the  name  of 
San  Francisco  Xavier  del  Bac,  perverted  by  local  usage 
into  "San  Xavier  del  Bac."  This  intrepid  missionary 
traveled  through  Lower  California,  Sonora  and  Arizona, 
instructing  the  desert  Indians  and  baptizing,  according 
to  Clavigero,  30,000  infants  and  adults.  From  1691  to 
1702  he  visited  all  the  tribes  of  these  regions,  solving 
many  interesting  problems  of  ethnology,  erecting  mis 
sions  and  collecting  vast  treasures  of  information  about 
the  land  and  its  wonderful  people,  the  Yumas,  Apaches, 
Opates,  Pimas  and  Zunis.  He  reached  the  Gila  in  1694, 
and  said  mass  in  the  ancient  ruin,  the  "Casa  Grande," 
which  is  yet  standing,  in  splendid  isolation,  amid  a  waste 
of  burning  sand.  In  1700  he  built  the  first  church,  and, 
according  to  his  biographer,  Ortega,  "He  used  a  light, 
porous  stone,  very  suitable  for  building." 

The  church  records  are  extant  from  1720-67,  and  show 
that  during  these  years  twenty-two  Jesuit  fathers  suc 
cessively  administered  Bac  and  neighboring  missions. 
In  1768  the  Franciscan  fathers  succeeded  the  Jesuits. 
In  that  year  Father  Garces  assumed  charge  of  this 
Pima  mission.  This  extraordinary  and  saintly  priest 
was  one  of  the  great  men  of  these  early  days.  In  his 
quest  for  perishing  souls  he  visited  all  the  tribes  of  Ari 
zona,  crossing  deserts,  scaling  mountains  and  enduring 
famine,  thirst  and  insult.  He  mapped,  charted  and 
named  mountains,  rivers  and  Indian  settlements.  He 
took  latitudes  and  longitudes,  and  was  the  first  white 
man  to  have  reached  the  Grand  Canyon  from  the  west 
and  give  it  a  specific  name.  His  diary  or  the  itinerary  of 
his  travels  was  translated  into  English  last  year  by  that 
eccentric,  but  honest,  bigot,  Elliott  Coues.  With  Mr. 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  173 

Cones'  historic,  topographic  and  invaluable  notes,  the 
diary  of  the  priest,  in  two  volumes,  is  a  splendid  addi 
tion  to  the  ethnographic  literature  of  the  Southwest. 

On  the  19th  of  July,  1781,  the  great  priest  was  mur 
dered  at  the  mission  of  the  Immaculate  Conception — 
now  Yuma — in  an  Indian  uprising  against  the  Spaniards. 
The  cornerstone  of  the  present  beautiful  church  of  the 
Bac  mission  was  laid  by  the  Franciscan  fathers  in  1783, 
and  the  date,  ' i  1797, ' '  still  legible  over  the  door,  records, 
no  doubt,  its  completion.  The  historian,  Hubert  H.  Ban 
croft,  calls  the  church  a  ' ' magnificent  structure,"  and 
devotes  three  pages  of  his  History  of  Arizona  to  this  mis 
sion.  In  1828,  soon  after  Mexico  broke  away  from  her 
allegiance  to  the  mother  country  and  declared  herself  an 
independent  republic,  chaos  reigned,  and  the  fathers 
were  compelled  by  the  force  of  circumstances  to  aban 
don  their  missions  in  Arizona.  The  Pima  and  Papago 
converts  assembled  in  the  church  every  Sunday  and  feast 
day,  and  for  years,  in  fact  until  the  return  of  a  priest  ap 
pointed  by  the  Bishop  of  Durango,  said  the  beads,  sang 
their  accustomed  hymns  and  made  the  stations  of  the 
cross.  The  historic  building  shows  sadly  the  wear  and 
tear  of  time  and  threatens  to  become  a  melancholy  ruin 
in  a  few  more  years. 

Some  time,  let  us  hope,  a  gifted  and  conscientious  his 
torian  will  appear  and  do  for  the  early  missionaries  of 
the  Southwest,  for  the  Kinos,  the  Garces,  the  Escalantes 
and  the  other  saintly  and  heroic  priests  and  martyrs, 
what  Parkman  has  done  for  the  early  Jesuits  of  Canada 
and  New  York,  and  Bryan  Clinch  for  the  Spanish  mis 
sionaries  of  Southern  and  Lower  California.  It  is  pop 
ularly  believed  that  Coronado,  on  his  way  to  the  Zuni 
pueblos  of  New  Mexico,  was  the  first  white  man  to  gaze 


174  BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL. 

upon  the  now  historic  ruins  known  as  the  Casa  Grande. 
I  have  once  or  twice  mentioned  the  name  of  Father 
Eusebio  Kino,  a  distinguished  missionary  and  a  heroic 
character,  who  merits  more  than  an  incidental  reference 
in  a  book  of  travel,  or  in  a  history  of  Northern  Mexico,  or 
of  the  Southwest  of  the  United  States. 

Adolph  Bandelier,  Charles  F.  Lummis,  and  that  inde 
fatigable  historical  burrower  and  delver  into  musty  man 
uscripts,  the  late  Dr.  Elliott  Coues,  have  settled  for  all 
time,  that  neither  Coronado  nor  any  one  of  his  men  ever 
saw  or  heard  of  the  "Casas  Grandes" — the  great  build 
ings  of  Southern  Arizona.  The  Jesuit  priest,  who  was 
the  first  white  man  to  see  and  explore  the  mysterious 
building — was  Father  Eusebio  Kino,  one  of  the  most  il 
lustrious  and  heroic  men  that  ever  trod  the  Southwest, 
if  not  the  American  continent.  The  record  of  the  trav 
els  and  missionary  labors  of  this  magnificent  priest  are 
to  be  found  in  Bancroft's  History  of  Arizona  and  Sonora, 
in  Elliott  Coues'  "On  the  Trail  of  a  Spanish  Pioneer," 
in  the  "Diario"  of  Juan  Mateo  Mange,  a  military  officer 
who  was  with  Padre  Kino  in  some  of  his  "entradas," 
or  expeditions,  and  in  the  first  volume  of  the  second 
series  of  the  work  entitled  "Documentos  para  lo  His- 
torio  de  Mexico, ' '  printed  in  Mexico  City  in  1854.  Lieu 
tenant  Mange,  in  his  journal,  writes  of  Father  Kino, 
whom  he  knew  intimately:  "He  was  a  man  of  wonder 
ful  talents,  an  astronomer,  a  mathematician,  and  cosmo- 
grapher. ' ' 

Before  I  relate  the  incidents  associated  with  the  dis 
covery  of  the  now  famous  ruins,  the  Casas  Grandes,  by 
Father  Kino,  let  me  hurriedly  record  something  of  the 
life  and  history  of  this  remarkable  priest  and  model  mis 
sionary. 


BY  PATH  AND  TEAIL.  175 

Eusebio  Francisco  Kuhne — or,  as  the  Spaniards  pro 
nounced  it,  Kino,  was  born  at  Trent,  Austrian  Tyrol,  in 
the  year  1640.  He  was  a  blood  relation  of  the  famous 
Asiatic  missionary,  Father  Martin-Martin.  After  grad 
uating  with  honors,  particularly  in  mathematics,  Kino 
declined  the  chair  of  mathematics  in  the  University  of 
Bavaria,  tendered  to  him  by  the  Duke  of  Bavaria.  Turn 
ing  aside  from  the  promise  of  a  distinguished  future  in 
Austria,  he  entered  the  Society  of  Jesus,  and  asked  for 
a  place  on  the  foreign  missions.  Arriving  in  Mexico  in 
1680,  the  year  of  Newton 's  comet,  he  was  drawn  into  a 
friendly  discussion  on  the  origin  of  comets  and  the  solar 
system,  with  the  Spanish  astronomer,  then  in  Mexico 
City,  Siguenza  y  Gongora.  His  remarkable  familiarity 
with  authorities  and  his  great  knowledge  of  the  solar  sys 
tems,  determined  his  assignation  to  duty  in  Lower  Cali 
fornia  as  cosmographer  major  on  Admiral  Isidore 
(Hondo's  expedition  of  1683. 

Eeturning  from  Lower  California,  he  was  assigned 
by  his  ecclesiastical  superior  to  the  mission  of  Sonora, 
which  then  embraced  all  southern  Arizona.  On  Decem 
ber  16,  1687,  he  left  the  Jesuit  college  at  Guadalajara, 
and  traveling  by  burro  and  on  foot,  arrived  in  Sonora, 
where  he  founded  the  mission  of  "Our  Lady, of  Sor 
rows,  ' '  which  remained  his  headquarters  until  his  death. 
Now  begins  his  wonderful  career. 

Leaving  his  Indian  mission  in  charge  of  an  assistant 
priest,  he  struck  out  for  the  Mayo  hunting  grounds,  and 
entering  the  valley  of  the  Eio  Magdalena,  preached  to  the 
Mayos,  and  gathering  them  in,  founded  the  pueblo  or  vil 
lage  settlement  of  St.  Ignatius.  He  now  swung  toward 
the  north  and  established  among  the  Humori  the  pueblo 
of  St.  Joseph  of  Humoris,  now  known  as  Imuris. 


176  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

Returning  to  his  mission  of  Our  Lady  of  Sorrows,  he 
waited  for  the  coming  of  Father  Juan  Maria  de  Salva- 
tierra,  the  superior  and  visitador,  or  visitor  of  the  Indian 
missions  of  Mexico.  This  was  the  Father  Salvatierra 
who  established  the  " Pious  Fund"  for  the  California 
Indians,  and  who  afterward  opened  the  mission  to  the 
Digger  Indians  and  became  known  as  the  Apostle  of 
Lower  California. 

A  few  days  after  the  arrival  of  Salvatierra,  the  two 
priests  set  out  on  a  missionary  itinerary,  visiting  and 
preaching  to  the  tribes  of  northern  Sonora,  till  they 
came  to  Cocaspera,  near  Nogales,  where  they  separated; 
Salvatierra  returning  by  Our  Lady  of  Sorrows  to  Guad 
alajara. 

Father  Kino  tarried  for  some  time  at  Cocaspera,  in 
structing  the  Indians,  and  early  in  May,  1691,  started  on 
his  historic  desert  journey  to  the  Santa  Cruz  valley, 
where  he  preached  to  the  Pimas  and  founded  the  pueblo 
and  mission  of  San  Xavier  del  Bac. 

To  describe  the  fatigues  and  hardships  of  a  journey 
in  those  days  from  Nogales  to  Tucson,  to  record  the 
varied  and  very  interesting  interviews  and  experiences 
with  the  tribes,  many  of  whom  had  never  before  seen 
a  white  man,  to  relate  the  hardships  and  trials  of  the 
great  missionary,  would  put  too  severe  a  tax  on  my  read 
ers,  so  I  hurry  on  to  the  Casas  Grandes. 

In  1694  Lieutenant  Juan  Mateo  Mange,  nephew  of 
Petriz  de  Crusate,  ex-governor  of  New  Mexico,  was  com 
missioned  to  accompany  Father  Kino  on  his  visits  to 
the  Indian  tribes,  and  on  his  exploring  expeditions,  and 
to  report  in  writing  what  he  saw  and  learned.  Mange 
joined  the  great  priest  at  his  mission  of  Our  Lady  of 
Sorrows  on  February  7,  1694;  they  crossed  the  Sierra 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  177 

del  Comedio,  and  on  the  15th  reached  the  coast,  first  of 
white  men  from  Pimeria  Alta — from  the  west — to  look 
out  upon  the  waters  of  the  great  gulf.  At  Turbutana, 
Mange  left  the  priest  for  a  time,  and  went  up  the  Col 
orado  river  to  a  rancheria  named  Cups,  so  called  from 
a  smoking,  rocky  cave  in  the  neighborhood.  Eeturning 
he  joined  Kino  at  Caborca,  bringing  news  of  famous 
ruins  said  to  exist  on  the  banks  of  a  river  entering  into 
the  Colorado,  or  Eiver  of  the  Immaculate  Conception,  as 
Kino  christened  it.  This  was  the  first  intimation  the 
Spaniards  had  of  these  remarkable  buildings.  The  party 
now  returned  to  the  mission  of  Our  Lady  of  Sorrows, 
Sonora.  While  here,  some  Indians,  Pimas  from  San 
Xavier,  on  the  Santa  Cruz,  Arizona,  came  on  a  visit  to 
the  priest,  who  questioned  them  on  the  existence  of  the 
pre-historic  ruins  near  the  Gila  river.  They  informed 
him  that  these  wonderful  ruins  were  standing  on  the 
desert,  but  of  their  origin  they  knew  nothing. 

In  October,  1694,  Kino,  accompanied  and  settled  Fran 
cis  Xavier  Saeta  as  missionary  at  Caborca,  where  he  was 
murdered  by  the  Yumas,  April  2,  1695.  Leaving  Saeta 
at  this  mission,  Father  Kino  now  set  out  alone  on  an 
expedition  to  the  Casas  Grandes.  He  reached  the  Gila, 
camped  for  the  night,  and  on  the  morning  of  November 
30,  entered  the  region  of  the  ruins,  and  in  the  largest 
of  the  three  buildings  offered  up  the  Holy  Sacrifice  of 
the  Mass.  Mange,  on  page  25  of  his  published  report, 
in  Spanish,  gives  the  whole  history,  and  bestows  great 
praise  on  Kino. 

The  priest  was  the  first  white  man  who  saw  and  ac 
curately  described  these  now  famous  pre-Columbian 
ruins.  This  wonderful  priest  tramped  the  valley  of  the 
Santa  Cruz  to  the  Gila.  Passing  down  the  Gila  to  its 


178  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

mouth,  after  exploring  the  country,  he  retraced  his 
steps,  penetrating  the  land  north  of  the  Gila  river  for 
some  distance,  and  ascending  the  Salt  river  and  other 
northern  branches  of  the  Gila.  His  explorations  did  not 
end  here.  Proceeding  east,  he  explored  the  valley  of  the 
San  Pedro  and  its  branches,  then  the  Gila  to  the  Mim- 
bres,  and  on  to  the  Eio  Grande  and  the  Messila  valley. 
He  went  from  Yuma,  crossed  the  Colorado  desert,  and 
traced  the  Colorado  river  to  its  mouth.  He  visited  sixty- 
three  tribes,  sub-tribes  and  families,  studying  the  wars, 
customs,  traditions,  folk-lore  and  habits  of  the  Indians. 
He  founded  missions,  built  churches,  made  maps  and 
tracings,  took  observations  and  left  us  a  mass  of  valua 
ble  information  on  the  botany,  geology  and  temperature 
of  the  country.  His  map  was  in  his  time,  and  long  after 
his  death,  the  best  delineation  of  Sonora,  southern  Ari 
zona  and  the  gulf  coast  of  Southern  California.  His 
life  was  an  unparalleled  record  of  devotion,  heroism  and 
dauntless  courage.  Of  him  we  may  repeat  what  Bacon 
wrote  of  Pius  V.,  to  whom  Christendom  is  indebted  for 
the  victory  of  Lepanto:  "I  am  astonished  that  the  Bo- 
man  church  has  not  yet  canonized  this  great  man." 

On  February  5,  1702,  Father  Kino,  accompanied  by 
Father  Gouzalez  (the  same  missionary  who  was  with 
Kino  on  his  excursion  to  the  mouth  of  the  Colorado), 
started  on  a  missionary  expedition  to  the  Gila  Indians, 
and  went  from  tribe  to  tribe,  till  he  arrived  at  the  mis 
sion  of  St.  Ignatius  on  the  Colorado  river.  Here  Father 
Gouzalez,  worn  out  with  hardship  and  illness,  lay  down 
and  died.  After  giving  Christian  burial  to  his  priestly 
companion,  the  great  priest  returned  to  his  mission  in 
Sonora.  His  report  of  his  entrada,  or  expedition,  bears 
the  date  April  2, 1702.  He  never  again  saw  the  Colorado 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  179 

or  Gila.  He  was  growing  old,  and  his  strong  constitu 
tion  was  beginning  to  give  way  under  the  'weight  of 
years,  and  the  wear  and  tear  of  missionary  travel  and 
missionary  labor.  His  last,  and,  in  a  sense,  his  most 
extended  journey,  was  made  toward  the  north,  during 
the  autumn  of  1706.  He  left  his  mission  late  in  October, 
and  swinging  around  by  way  of  Remedies,  made  his 
wonderful  tour  to  the  Santa  Clara  mountains,  preach 
ing  to  and  evangelizing  the  tribes  on  his  way.  From 
the  summit  of  Santa  Clara  he  looked  out  for  the  last 
time  on  the  waters  of  the  Gulf  of  California,  noting  the 
continuity  of  Lower  Camornia  from  Pimeria,  the  main 
land,  and  fixing  for  all  time  its  peninsular  character. 
This  was  the  last,  long,  eartnly  pilgrimage  of  the  great 
Jesuit  and  typical  missionary,  whose  explorations  and 
fearless  endurance  on  behalf  of  perishing  souls,  lift  him 
unto  a  plane  of  canonization  and  a  pedestal  of  fame.  He 
returned  to  his  mission  in  Sonora,  where  he  passed  his 
few  remaining  years,  training  his  swarthy  converts  in 
decency  and  clean  living,  making  short  visits  to  neigh 
boring  pueblos,  and  adding  by  his  heroism  and  saintly 
life  another  name  to  the  catalogue  of  brilliant  and  won 
derful  men  for  whom  the  world  and  the  church  are  in 
debted  to  the  Society  of  Jesus.  He  died  in  1711,  aged 
70,  having  surrendered  thirty  of  these  seventy  years  to 
the  saving  and  civilizing  of  the  Sonora  and  Arizona 
members  of  that  strange  and  mysterious  race,  the  Amer 
ican  Indian. 

Let  us  hope  that  some  day  a  Catholic  Parkman  will 
appear,  gifted  with  his  marvelous  fascination  of  style, 
his  tireless  industry,  his  command  of  language,  with  an 
appreciation  of  the  supernatural,  and  an  admiration  of 
saintly  asceticism,  which  the  Harvard  master  had  not, 


180  BY  PATH  AND  TEAIL. 

and  do  for  the  dauntless  Spanish  missionaries  of  Lower 
California,  the  coast  and  the  Southwest,  what  Parkman 
dfd  for  the  French  missionary  priests  of  Canada  and 
western  New  York,  when  he  bequeathed  to  us  his  immor 
tal  "Jesuits  of  North  America. " 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

A   MIBACLE   OP   NATURE. 

On  the  earth's  surface  there  is  no  plat  of  ground 
bristling  with  sharper  problems  for  the  micro scopist,  or 
that  offers  to  the  analyst  more  interesting  specimens  for 
examination,  than  the  eight  or  ten  square  miles  of  land 
in  northeastern  Arizona,  known  as  the  Petrified  Forest. 
Here  nature  exults  in  accomplished  miracles,  in  mar 
velous  and  seemingly  impossible  transmutations,  in 
achievements  transcending  imagination  and  the  possi 
bilities  of  science.  Here,  where  the  giant  trees  fell  in 
the  days  before  man  was  upon  the  earth  to  count  time, 
they  lie  to-day,  with  shape  and  outline  unchanged,  with 
bark  and  cell  and  nodule  unaltered  to  the  eye,  with 
everything  the  same  save  that  alone  which  constitutes  a 
tree  and  gives  to  it  its  own  specific  name.  Here,  for 
miles  around,  the  land  is  chased  with  unpolished  jewels, 
which  ask  but  the  touch  of  the  lapidary's  art  to  reproduce 
Milton's  "firmament  of  living  sapphires."  They  re 
main  with  us  to  bear  imperishable  testimony  to  the  dec 
laration  of  the  evangelist,  that,  "with  God,  all  things  are 
possible." 

When  the  adventurous  Spaniards  returned  home  from 
the  Orinoco  and  the  shores  of  the  Spanish  Main,  after 
their  fruitless  expedition  in  quest  of  the  "El  Dorado" — 
the  gilded  man — and  told  of  the  wondrous  things  and 
monstrous  creations  they  had  seen — the  Lake  of  Pitch, 
the  disappearing  rivers,  the  land  and  sea  monsters,  the 
men  with  tails,  the  Amazons,  the  female  warriors  who 
gave  their  name  to  the  greatest  river  in  America— the 


182  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

world  marveled,  but  believed.  Yet  when  Andres  Do- 
rantes  and  Alonzo  Maldonado  returning  after  years  of 
wandering  in  the  desert  and  mountain  lands  of  south 
western  America,  recorded  the  existence  of  a  great  forest 
they  had  visited,  where  precious  stones  of  jasper  and 
onyx  strewed  the  ground,  and  where  trees  of  agate  and 
carnelian,  blown  down  by  a  mighty  wind,  encumbered 
the  earth,  there  was  an  uppricking  of  ears  among  the 
learned  men  of  Madrid,  then  a  wagging  of  heads  and 
finally  loud  and  incredulous  laughter.  As  well  ask  them 
to  believe  in  the  existence  of  a  herd  of  cattle  suspended 
in  mid-air,  frozen  into  rigidity  and  retaining  their  shapes 
and  outlines.  Yet  the  forest  was  here  and  is  here  now, 
unchanged  and  unchangeable. 

In  the  memorial  to  congress,  adopted  in  1895,  by  the 
legislative  assembly  of  Arizona,  requesting  that  Chal 
cedony  Forest  be  made  a  national  park,  the  area  of  the 
forest  is  defined  to  be  "ten  miles  square,  covered  with 
trunks  of  agatized  trees,  some  of  which  measure  over 
200  feet  in  length,  and  from  seven  to  ten  feet  in  diam 
eter."  In  this  official  statement  we  have  the  limits  of 
the  wonderful  region  accurately  defined,  and  the  mate 
rial  of  the  trees  recorded. 

I  have  seen  the  petrified  trees  of  Yellowstone  Park, 
some  of  them  yet  standing,  the  stone  trees  of  Wyoming, 
and  those  of  the  Calistoga  Grove  of  California,  but  the 
petrified  region  of  Arizona  is  the  only  place  in  the  world 
where  the  trees  are  in  such  number  as  to  merit  the  name 
of  a  forest.  In  delicacy  of  veining,  in  brilliancy  and  va 
riety  of  coloring,  they  outclass  all  other  petrifications. 
But  Professor  Tolman,  the  geologist  of  the  University 
of  Arizona,  tells  me  there  is  another  notable  distinction 
which  places  this  forest  of  chalcedony  in  a  class  by  itself. 


BY  PATH  AND  TBAIL.  183 

The  trees  are  much,  very  much  more  ancient  than  those 
of  Yellowstone  park.  Of  course,  I  cannot  mark  time  with 
Professor  Tolman  when  figuring  upon  the  very  remote 
beginning  of  creation.  I  am  yet  a  Christian,  and  will,  I 
am  satisfied,  die  in  my  belief  in  revelation.  My  studies 
in  archaeology  and  paleontology  but  confirm  me  in  my 
attachment  to  the  orthodox  school  of  theology.  Dr.  Tol 
man  and  the  school  to  which  he  belongs  count  by  millions 
of  years,  I  count  by  thousands.  "The  petrified  trees  of 
all  other  known  localities, "  said  the  learned  professor 
of  geology,  "are  of  tertiary  age,  while  the  Arizona  for 
est  goes  far  back  into  Mesozoic  time,  probably  to  the 
Triassic  formation.  The  difference  in  their  antiquity  is 
therefore  many  millions  of  years." 

And,  now,  before  I  attempt  to  describe  this  great  won 
der,  as  it  appeared  to  me,  let  me  for  a  moment  linger 
by  the  wayside.  About  sixteen  years  ago  there  was  a 
man  named  Adam  Hanna,  who  lived  between  the  Santa 
Fe  railroad  and  the  nearest  point  to  the  petrified  forest. 
When  the  officials  of  the  road  decided  to  build  a  station 
due  north  of  the  forest  and  about  eight  miles  from  the 
Natural  Bridge,  they  gave  it  the  name  of  Adamana,  in 
compliment  to  Mr.  Adam  Hanna,  upon  whom  fell  the 
honor  of  conducting  scientists  and  visitors  to  the  forest. 
At  Adamana,  I  stepped  from  the  train,  and,  with  a  com 
panion,  took  the  stage  for  the  petrified  lands.  Midway, 
between  the  station  and  the  Natural  Bridge,  we  left  the 
wagon  and  struck  across  the  country  to  visit  the  ruins 
of  an  Indian  pueblo  and  fortification,  whose  people  had 
disappeared  many  years  before  the  Spaniards  crossed 
the  mountains  of  Arizona.  Approaching  the  ruin  we  en 
tered  the  tribal  graveyard,  where  some  years  ago  a  vast 
accumulation  of  silver  and  copper  ornaments,  of  agate 


184  .     BY  PATH  AND  TEAIL. 

spearheads,  arrow  tips  of  jasper  and  obsidian  and  beau 
tiful  pottery  was  unearthed.  These  were  buried  with 
the  dead,  whose  bones  had  wasted  to  dust  many  years  be 
fore  the  white  vandals  had  rifled  the  graves.  The  pre 
historic  buildings  are  now  a  confused  mass  of  sun-dried 
brick  and  sandstone,  but  when  Mulhausen  was  here  sixty 
years  ago,  the  divisionary  lines  of  300  houses  or  rooms- 
were  traceable,  and  a  few  feet  of  a  wall  standing.  When 
the  exploring  party  for  the  Pacific  railroad  passed  here 
in  1853,  it  was  said  that  traces  of  unique  pictographs  or 
symbolic  writings  yet  remained  on  the  face  of  a  neigh 
boring  cliff.  A  little  to  the  west  of  Chalcedony  Park  are 
the  remains  of  another  abandoned  village.  A  few  scat 
tered  huts  are  still  nearly  intact,  unique,  ghost-like, 
alone,  unlike  anything  found  elsewhere  upon  the  earth. 
The  material  entering  into  their  construction  is  like 
unto  that  of  which  the  New  Jerusalem  of  the  Apocalypse 
is  built,  for  "the  building  of  the  walls  thereof  are  of 
jasper,  and  the  foundations  adorned  with  all  manner  of 
precious  stones." 

The  ancient  builders  selected  silicified  logs  of  uniform 
size  for  their  dwellings,  and,  with  adobe  and  precious 
chips  of  Chalcedony,  chinked  the  valuable  timbers.  Never 
did  prince  or  millionaire  choose  more  beautiful  or  more 
imperishable  material  for  even  a  single  room  of  his 
palace  than  the  trunks  of  these  trees  which  stood  erect 
ages  before  the  first  man  saw  the  setting  sun. 

When  I  entered  the  wonderful  forest  and  ascended 
an  elevation  from  which  I  could  command  my  surround 
ings,  I  experienced  a  feeling  of  disappointment.  From 
magazine  articles  and  letters  of  travelers,  I  was  led  to 
believe  that  this  mystic  region  was  a  dream  of  scenic 
joy.  I  confess  I  was  keyed  up  too  high  by  these  descrip- 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  185 

lions,  and  for  a  time  was  not  in  accord  with  my  environ 
ment.  The  land  here  is  a  desert,  lifted  5,000  to  6,000 
feet  above  sea  level,  and  cut  up  into  small  mesas  or  table 
levels,  into  many  ridges,  buttes,  gulches  and  miniature 
ravines  carrying  little  vegetation.  Flowing  southward, 
into  a  winding  channel,  is  the  Lithodendron  (stone 
river),  or,  more  correctly,  creek.  The  valley  of  this  river 
at  a  certain  bend  widens  out  to  the  east  and  west,  form 
ing  an  alluvial  depression  whose  banks  and  slopes  are 
rugged,  spurred  and  ravined.  Here  one  enters  the  heart 
of  the  petrified  forest,  and  the  section  known  as  Chal 
cedony  Park.  And  now  everything  and  the  position  of 
everything  are  startling.  On  the  knolls,  spurs  and  iso 
lated  elevations,  in  the  hollows,  ravines  and  gulches,  on 
the  surface  of  the  lowlands,  piled  up  as  if  skidded  by  tim- 
bermen  or  flung  recklessly  across  each  other  in  heaps, 
lie  the  silicified  logs  in  greatest  confusion.  Everywhere, 
with  unstinted  prodigality,  the  ground  is  sown  with 
gems,  with  chips,  splinters  and  nodules  of  agate,  jasper 
and  carnelian  of  all  shapes  and  sizes,  and  displaying  all 
the  colors  of  the  lunar  rainbow. 

Buried  in  the  sand  hills  rising  above  the  valley  to  the 
west,  are  petrified  logs  squaring  three  and  four  feet 
at  the  butts  which  protrude  from  the  beetling  bluffs. 
Curiously  enough,  specimens  from  these  trunks  are  not 
of  agate  color,  but  of  a  soft  blending  of  brown  and  gray 
and  absolutely  opaque,  while  chips  from  the  trees  in  the 
valley  are  translucent,  and  many  of  them  transparent 
as  glass.  The  state  of  mineralization  in  which  many  of 
these  valley  trees  are  found  almost  lifts  them  into  ma 
terial  for  gems  and  precious  stones,  opals,  jasper,  ame 
thysts  and  emeralds.  One  of  the  most  extraordinary  fea 
tures  of  this  marvelous  region  is  the  Natural  Bridge,  an 


186  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

agatized  tree,  spanning  a  miniature  canyon  twenty-five 
feet  deep  and  thirty  feet  wide,  on  which  a  man  may 
safely  cross.  The  tree  is  in  an  excellent  state  of  preser 
vation  and  shows  no  marks  of  sand  abrasion;  it  lies 
diagonally  across  the  ravine  and  measures  a  span  of 
forty-four  feet.  From  end  to  butt  the  tree  is  110  feet 
long  and,  as  with  all  the  stone  logs  of  this  quarter 
of  the  forest,  there  are  no  branches  adhering  to  top  or 
body.  So  much  of  the  material  of  the  forest  retains  its 
natural  color,  bark  and  shape,  and  so  true  is  the  piling 
that  looking  on  them  one  would  be  inclined  to  believe 
tnat  some  settler,  who  was  clearing  the  land,  had  left  for 
dinner  and  might  at  any  moment  return  and  fire  the  pile. 
Another  very  singular  and  as  yet  unexplained  phenome 
non  are  the  rings  or  divisionary  markings  encircling 
many  of  the  logs  from  end  to  end.  These  ring  marks 
girdle  the  trunks  every  eighteen  inches  and  do  not  vary 
the  eighth  of  an  inch.  Either  by  the  disintegration  of 
the  mesa  or  by  torrential  floods  the  trees  have  been  car 
ried  down  from  higher  levels  and  in  the  moving  suffered 
many  fractures,  some  of  them  being  broken  into  frag 
ments.  Now  all  these  logs,  measuring  from  twenty  to 
ninety  feet,  broke  transversely  and  every  time  the  break 
was  on  the  ring.  How  these  rings  were  formed  remains 
to  this  day  an  unsolved  problem.  The  material  of  these 
trees  is  so  hard  that  some  years  ago  an  abrasive  com 
pany  of  Chicago  made  preparations  to  grind  the  logs 
into  emery.  Their  plant  was  brought  from  Chicago  to 
Adamana,  where  it  is  now  falling  to  pieces  from  rust  and 
neglect.  In  answer  to  my  enquiry  why  it  was  not  set  up, 
I  was  told  tnat  a  Canadian  company,  at  about  the  same 
time,  began  at  Montreal  the  manufacture  of  abrasive 
sand  and  lowered  the  price  of  the  material  below  the 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  187 

point  where**  it  would  pay  to  grind  up  the  trees.  Out  of 
this  agatized  wood  have  been  manufactured  most  beauti 
ful  table  tops,  mantels,  clock  cases,  pedestals  and  orna 
mental  articles.  But  the  cost, of  sawing,  chiseling  and 
polishing  make  the  goods  very  expensive.  To  give  you 
an  example.  When  Tiffany's  workmen  started  to  saw  off 
a  section  from  one  of  these  logs  to  form  a,  pedestal  for 
the  silver  vase  of  the  Bartholdi  presentation,  they  began 
with  a  six-inch  saw  of  Sheffield  steel  aided  with  diamond 
dust.  Sawing  eight  hours  a  day,  they  were  five  days 
cutting  through  a  four-foot  log  which  wore  their  six-inch 
saw  to  a  ribbon  one-half  inch  wide.  Although  there  are 
millions  of  tons  of  the  petrified  material  scattered  around 
this  region,  the  lust  of  gain  and  accumulation,  which  be 
comes  a  passion  with  some  of  us,  would  soon  strip  the 
forest  to  the  naked  desert  if  congress  had  not  intervened 
to  save  it.  For  forty  years '  despoilers  have  been  rifling 
the  land,  gathering  and  shipping  the  silicified  wood  to 
the  east.  Much  has  been  sold  to  museums  and  private 
collectors,  but  much  more  has  been  shipped  to  dealers 
and  manufacturers.  Visitors  to  the  park  may  carry 
away  with  them  a  few  specimens,  but  no  dealing  or 
trafficking  in  the  precious  material  is  now  permitted. 


CHAPTEE  XXII. 

THE  PBE-HISTORIC  RUIN. 

"1  am  writing  near  the  foothills  of  the  Catalina  moun 
tains  and  from  the  bed  of  an  evaporated  inland  sea.  It 
is  now  a  desert  whose  vegetation  is  unlike  anything  seen 
east  of  the  Missouri  river.  Around  me  tower  the  statu 
esque  "pithaya"  or  candelabrum  cactus,  bearing  in  sea 
son  luscious  fruit ;  the  massive  bisnaga,  of  wondrous  for 
mation  and  erratic  habits,  whose  fruit  is  boiled  by  the 
Maricopa  squaws  and  made  into  palatable  candy.  From 
the  slopes  of  the  mountains  spring  giant  specimens  of 
the  thorny  ' '  sahuaro, ' 9  resembling  from  afar  monuments 
erected  by  man  to  commemorate  some  great  historical 
events  in  the  life  of  the  early  people.  Further  down, 
near  the  bed  of  an  exhausted  stream,  are  patches  of 
withered  "palmilla"  or  bear's  grass,  from  which  the 
Pima  women  make  waterproof  baskets.  Around  the 
desert,  miles  and  miles  away,  rise  porphyritic  mountains, 
the  Eincons,  the  Santa  Eita,  the  Tortillitas,  grim, 
savage  and  withal  picturesque  and  weirdly  fasci 
nating.  Their  rugged  sides  are  torn,  gashed  and  cut  to 
pieces,  their  cones  now  cold  and  dead,  stand  sharp  and 
clear  against  a  sky  of  opalescent  clearness.  In  times 
past,  in  years  geologically  not  very  remote,  the  flanks  of 
these  towering  hills  were  red  with  fire  and  their  peaks 
ablaze  with  volcanic  flame. 

Gazing  on  them  from  afar  you  experience  a  sensation 
of  awe,  a  consciousness  of  the  earth's  great  age  domi 
nates  you,  and  down  the  avenues  of  time,  down  through 
the  ages  there  comes  to  you  the  portentous  question  of 


190  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

the  inspired  author  of  Ecclesiasticus :  "Is  there  any 
thing  whereof  it  may  be  said:  see,  this  is  new;  it  hath 
been  already  of  old  time,  which  was  before  us."  Almost 
within  gunshot  of  where  I  sit  repose  in  solitary  isola 
tion  a  group  of  buildings,  the  despair  of  antiquarians  and 
historically  very  old.  The  central  building  is  a  large 
edifice,  whose  adobe  walls  have  resisted  for  many  centu 
ries  the  erosion  of  time,  the  abrasion  of  drifting  sand 
and  the  wear  and  tear  of  torrential  storms.  This  is  the 
now  historic  ' '  Casa  Grande ' '  or  Great  House,  so  named 
by  the  early  Spanish  explorers.  Its  walls  are  almost 
oriented  to  the  four  cardinal  points,  built  of  adobe  blocks 
of  unequal  length  and  laid  with  symmetry  in  a  cement 
of  the  same  composition  as  the  walls.  This  famous  group 
of  ruins  rests  on  a  raised  plateau,  about  two  miles  to 
the  south  of  the  Gila  river,  in  the  midst  of  a  thick  growth 
of  mesquite.  Many  of  the  buildings,  from  two  to  four 
stories  high,  are  now  roofed  and  kept  in  repair  by  the 
United  States  government,  and  are  included  in  the  pro 
tected  governmental  reserves.  Around  the  principal 
buildings  are  heaps  of  ruins  and  many  acres  of  shapeless 
debris,  all  that  remain  of  an  ancient  Indian  town  or 
pueblo  that  was  abandoned  long  before  the  daring  Span 
iard,  Francisco  de  Coronado,  in  1540,  entered  Arizona. 
It  was  through  this  wild  and  mystic  region  that  Padre 
Marcos  made  his  weird  expedition  in  1539  in  quest  of  the 
elusive  seven  cities  of  Cibola.  In  his  report  of  his  ex 
plorations  he  mentions  the  great  buildings,  then  known 
to  the  Pima  tribe  by  its  Indian  name  of  ' l  Chichilitical. ' ' 
Here,  too,  after  wandering  over  thousands  of  miles  of 
mountains  and  barren  deserts,  passed  the  daring  adven 
turers  and  explorers,  Pedro  de  Tehan,  Lopez  de  Car- 
dines  and  Cabezza  de  Vaca,  the  solitary  survivors  of  Nar- 


— Copyright  by  Underwood  &  Underwood,  New  York. 

RUINS,  ANCIENT  AND  MODERN. 


BY  PATH  AND  TEA1L.  191 

vaes '  unfortunate  expedition  which  went  to  pieces  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Suwanee  river,  one  hundred  years  before 
De  Soto  crossed  the  Mississippi.  After  them  came  the 
fearless  and  saintly  missionary,  Padre  Eusebio  Kino,  so 
highly  praised  by  Venaga,  the  early  historian  of  Cali 
fornia.  Of  the  time  when  the  Casa  Grande  was  left  deso 
late  before  the  coming  of  the  Spaniards  as  early  as 
1539,  or  when  the  ground  was  broken  for  the  foundations 
of  the  town,  whose  walls  even  then  were  an  indistinguish 
able  heap  of  ruins,  the  neighboring  tribes  had  no  tradi 
tion.  It  is  really  wonderful  how  these  structures  of  sun- 
dried  brick  have  resisted  the  ravages  of  decay  and  the 
elements  for  500  years  of  known  time. 

These  mysterious  people  carried  from  the  Grila  Elver 
an  irrigation  canal  three  miles  long,  27  feet  wide  and 
10  feet  deep,  and  converted  the  barren  sands  around 
them  into  fertile  gardens.  The  word  "  pueblo  "  in  Span 
ish  means  simply  a  village,  but  in  American  ethnography 
it  has  obtained  a  special  significance  from  the  peculiar 
style  of  the  structures  or  groups  of  buildings  scattered 
along  the  Gila  and  Salt  Eiver  valleys,  whose  architecture 
was  unlike  that  of  any  buildings  found  outside  the  north 
ern  frontiers  of  Mexico,  Arizona  and  New  Mexico.  The 
most  fertile  valleys  of  these  regions  were  occupied  by  a 
semi-civilized  and  agricultural  race.  The  face  of  these 
lands  was  dotted  with  buildings  five  and  six  stories  high, 
held  in  common  by  many  families,  and  in  many  instances 
the  houses  and  villages  were  superior  to  those  of  the 
new  existing  pueblo  towns.  They  were  built  for  defense, 
the  walls  of  great  thickness  and  the  approaches  in  many 
cases  difficult.  At  least  a  century,  perhaps  many  centu 
ries,  before  the  coming  of  the  Spaniards,  the  decline  be 
gan  and  continued  with  the  certainty  of  a  decree  of  fate, 


192  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

until  but  a  mere  remnant  of  the  town  builders  and  their 
singular  structures  now  remains  in  the  valley  of  the  Eio 
Grande  and  the  land  of  the  Moqui.  Bartlett  and  Hubert 
Bancroft,  the  historians,  are  of  the  opinion  that,  at  one 
time,  in  the  Salt  Eiver  country  there  was  a  population 
of  200,000  Indians — Pimas,  Maricopas  and  Papagoes — of 
whom  buf  a  pitiful  remnant  now  remains.  Of  a  certain 
ty,  tribal  wars  and,  it  may  be,  famine  and  pestilence  wore 
down  the  race  and  in  a  few  years  the  white  man's  vices 
and  the  white  man's  diseases  will  finish  them.  Whether 
they  would  ever  have  advanced  beyond  their  rude  arbhi- 
tecture  and  simple  hoe  culture  is  very  doubtful.  I  am  of 
the  opinion,  from  a  study  of  and  experience  with  the 
Brazilian  tribes,  that  when  the  Europeans  came  to  the 
southwest  the  indigenous  people  were  descending  from 
barbarism  to  savagery,  and,  like  the  Aztec  tribes  of 
Mexico,  would,  with  the  march  of  time,  become  cannibals. 
Savage  man  cannot  of  himself  move  upward.  The  negro 
xof  equatorial  Africa  was  a  savage  long  before  the  time 
of  Herodotus;  for  four  thousand  years  he  took  not  one 
single  step  toward  civilization,  and  Livingstone  and 
Stanley  found  him  the  same  brutalized  man  that  he  was 
in  the  days  of  the  first  Eameses.  St.  Paul,  two  thou 
sand  years  ago,  in  language  that  admits  of  no  equivoca 
tion,  said  that  it  was  impossible  for  man  to  attain  to  a 
knowledge  of  the  higher  truths  without  a  teacher.  The 
low  state  of  some  of  the  American  tribes,  the  South  Sea 
islander,  and  the  African  savage,  when  first  encountered 
by  civilized  man,  would  seem  to  prove  that,  unassisted  by 
a  higher  type  of  the  human  race,  the  savage  cannot  ris& 
out  of  his  degradation.  And  if  even  man,  when  having 
gone  down  to  savagery,  could  never  ascend  the  steep  de 
cline  he  Ead  once  trodden,  how  was  it  possible  for  the 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  193 

half -ape — half -man  of  the  Agnostic  to  lift  himself  to  a 
higher  plane  ?  I  cannot  resist  the  malicious  suspicion 
that  all  these  puerile  and  violent  attempts  to  account  for 
the  origin  of  man  were  intended  to  destroy  the  credibility 
of  revelation  and  belief  in  the  divinity  and  perpetuity  of 
Christianity. 

Here,  near  the  Casa  Grande,  I  saw  for  the  first  time 
the  alligator  lizard  or  "Gila  monster/ '  imprisoned  in  a 
wire  enclosure  on  the  ranch  of  a  Mexican  vaquero.  Full 
grown,  this  repulsive  reptile  is  three  feet  long,  of  a 
black-brownish  color,  with  the  snout  of  a  crocodile  and 
the  eye  of  a  snake.  The  hideous  and  venomous  thing 
bore  an  evil  reputation  three  thousand  years  ago.  He 
is  the  only  surviving  reptile  that  answers  to  the  Biblical 
description  of  the  cockatrice  or  basilisk.  In  those  early 
days  it  inspired  loathing  and  was  shunned  for  its  subtlety 
and  dreaded  bite.  It  was  selected,  with  the  asp  and  other 
poisonous  creatures,  by  Isaiah  to  illustrate  the  benign 
influence  of  our  Divine  Lord  in  subduing  the  fierce  pas 
sions  of  men  which  he  compared  to  ravenous  beasts  and 
poisonous  reptiles.  In  prophetic  allegory  the  inspired 
Judean  foretells  the  time  when  "the  suckling  child  shall 
play  on  the  hole  of  the  asp  and  the  weaned  child  shall  put 
his  hand  in  the  den  of  the  basilisk. "  Is  the  bite  of  this 
repulsive  creature  fatal?  When  the  Gila  monster  at 
tains  its  growth  and  is  not  in  a  torpid  or  semi-torpid 
condition  its  bite  is  as  serious  as  that  of  the  rattlesnake. 
When  young  or  in  a  torpid  state,  often  for  four  months 
of  the  year,  the  "hila"  does  not  secrete  poison.  Ignor 
ance  of  the  habits  of  the  reptile  have  led  to  interminable 
disputes  and  discussions  making  an  agreement  of  opinion 
impossible.  When  I  was  in  Yuma  I  met  a  surgeon  who, 
last  year,  treated  two  men  who  had  been  bitten.  I  need 


194  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

not  enter  into  the  details  of  how  they  happened  to  be 
bitten.  One  man  came  to  the  surgeon  last  November, 
three  hours  after  the  "hila"  sank  his  teeth  in  his  hand. 
The  doctor  cauterized  the  wound  and  the  man  experi 
enced  no  more  inconvenience  than  he  would  from  the 
bite  of  a  gopher.  The  other  man,  Ernest  Phair  by  name, 
was  bitten  at  four  in  the  afternoon,  had  the  wound  cauter 
ized  and  treated  with  antiseptics  two  hours  after  the 
bite.  At  10  o  'clock  that  night  he  was  ' '  out  of  his  mind, ' ' 
his  limbs  became  shockingly  tumefied  and  at  2  o'clock  in 
the  morning  Phair  died.  This  loathsome  creature  of 
giant  wrack  is  disappearing  and  in  twenty  or  thirty  years 
it  will  be  extinct.  Eeference  here  to  Yuma  reminds  me 
that  nowhere  in  the  southwest  have  I  seen  tramps,  hoboes 
and  yegg  men  behave  themselves  as  well  as  they  do  in 
this  town.  When  I  mentioned  this  good  behavior  of  the 
" floating  brigade"  to  Sheriff  Livingston  he  said  that 
conditions  made  for  it.  "You  see,"  continued  the  sheriff, 
"there  is  practically  no  escape  from  Yuma  for  a  crimi 
nal.  The  only  avenues  open  are  the  railroad  and  the 
river.  To  strike  across  the  country  would  mean  death 
from  tHirst  on  the  desert.  This  accounts  for  the  fact 
that  the  tramps  and  hoboes  are  very  peaceful  in  Yuma. 
The  river  and  railroads  offer  no  hope  to  an  escaped 
prisoner,  for  they  are  too  well  policed." 

Accompanied  by  a  guide,  I  left  Casa  Grande  early  in 
the  forenoon  on  burros  or  donkeys,  and  struck  southeast 
across  the  Aravapi  desert,  hoping  to  reach  the  historic 
town  of  Tucson  some  time  in  the  afternoon  of  the  next 
day.  Passing  over  ten  miles  of  desert  we  entered  the 
canyon  of  Santa  Catalina  in  the  mountains  of  the  same 
name.  For  four  miles  we  traveled  through  a  dark  and 
dismal  gorge  enclosed  by  walls  1,000  feet  above  the  trail 


BY  PATH  AND  TEAIL.  195 

and  no  place  wider  than  an  ordinary  street.  Wherever 
a  cat  could  stand  a  cactus  grew,  whose  thorny  plates 
matted  the  face  of  the  escarpment.  Sheltered  from  the 
sun  by  walls  of  solid  granite,  porphyry  or  basalt,  the 
great  pass  was  cool  and  the  silence  intense.  Here  and 
there  were  piles  of  loose  stones  and  boulders  deposited 
when  the  rains  of  the  summer  solstice  swept  madly  down 
the  flanks  of  the  Catalinas  and  swelled  this  gorge  to  a 
rushing  torrent.  When  we  emerged  from  the  gloomy 
canyon  we  saw  before  us  another  desert,  stretching  away 
many  miles  to  the  Santa  Eita  range,  supposed  by  the 
early  Spanish  explorers  to  contain  fabulous  hordes  of 
gold  and  silver.  To  our  right  rose  the  Baboquivari,  the 
sacred  mount  of  the  Papagoes.  Across  this  desert  four 
hundred  years  ago  marched  the  Spanish  missionary  and 
explorer,  Father  Marcos  of  Nizza,  on  his  way  to  the 
Zuni  towns  in  northern  Arizona  to  bear  a  message  of 
salvation  to  these  strange  people,  "who  sat  in  darkness 
and  in  the  shadow  of  death. ' ' 


CHAPTEB  XXIII. 

A  CITY  IN  THE  DESEET. 

Nowhere  is  the  dividing  line  between  the  old  and  the 
new  so  sharply  drawn  as  in  Tucson.  I  do  not  mean  the 
growth  from  a  frontier  or  bush  village  into  a  city  or  that 
of  a  mining  camp  into  a  town  as  in  the  mineral  states. 
To  this  transition  we  are  accustomed.  Here  the  modern 
city  has  grown  away  from  the  old  Mexican  pueblo  which 
is  yet  a  numerically  strong  part  of  it,  growing  out  into 
the  desert,  leaving  the  quaint  old  Mexican  village  in 
possession  of  the  fertile  valley  of  Santa  Cruz.  It  is  not  a 
divorce — a  mense  et  thoro — from  bed  and  board,  nor  yet 
a  separation,  but  rather  a  spreading  out,  an  elongation 
of  the  young  giant  towards  and  into  the  desert.  The  his 
toric  pueblo,  so  full  of  romance  and  story,  is  left  in  pos 
session  of  its  own  ground,  its  own  religion,  language,  tra 
dition  and  customs.  Its  people  have  a  voice  in  the  selec 
tion  of  the  mayor  and  are  eligible  for  any  office  in  the 
gift  of  the  citizens,  are  protected  by  the  same  laws  and 
the  same  police  as  are  those  of  whiter  color. 

Tucson  had  a  name  and  was  a  rancheria  of  Pimas, 
Papagoes  and  Sobaipuri  before  the  great  missionary, 
Padre  Kino,  visited  it  in  1691.  He  was  the  first  white 
iran  that  ever  crossed  the  Santa  Cruz  from  the  west  and 
entered  Tucson.  In  1773  it  was  still  a  rancheria,  but 
many  of  its  swarthy  denizens  had  already  been  received 
into  the  church;  it  was  visited  regularly  by  the  priests 
of  San  Xavier  del  Bac  and  was  now  San  Jose  de  Tucson. 
In  1771  the  Spanish  garrison  or  presidio  at  Tubac  was 
shifted  to  Tucson,  a  resident  priest  appointed  and  the 


198  BY  PATH  A^D  TRAIL. 

adobe  church  of  St.  Augustin  built,  the  walls  of  which 
are  yet  standing  on  the  east  bank  of  the  Santa  Cruz,  one 
of  the  disappearing  rivers  of  the  southwest.  With  the 
coming  of  the  railroad  in  1880  the  really  modern  Tucson 
begins.  In  1803  two  meteoric  bodies  were  found  here 
weighing  respectively  1,600  and' 632  pounds.  The  rub 
bish  that  has  been  written  about  Tucson  in  the  news 
papers,  books  and  magazines  of  the  east,  is  only  matched 
by  the  myths  and  fables  published  about  Santa  Fe.  From 
before  Father  Kino's  visit  in  1691  Tucson  was  never 
heard  of.  Since  then,  down  to  the  building  of  the  South 
ern  Pacific,  its  history  is  a  record  of  blood  and  murders, 
of  Apache  raids,  of  Mexican  feuds  and  American  out 
laws,  gamblers  and  hold-up  men  who  exterminated  each 
other  or  were  lynched  by  the  law-abiding  citizens.  To 
day  Tucson  is  a  city  of  law  and  order  and  will  soon  be 
the  metropolis  of  Arizona.  So  much  by  way  of  a  preface 
and  now  let  us  continue  our  impressions  of  the  city. 

The  early  Spaniards  civilized  and  Christianized  the 
Aztecs  of  Mexico  and  intermarried  with  them.  From 
these  unions  were  begotten  the  race  known  to-day  as 
Mexican,  though  the  average  American  very  often  con 
fuses — and  very  annoyingly  to  the  Mexican — the  Indian 
tribes  of  the  Mexican  republic  with  the  descendants  of 
the  Spanish  colonists  and  military  settlers  and  the  daugh 
ters  of  the  warriors  of  Montezuma.  The  Spaniards  did 
something  more.  They  imparted  to  their  descendants 
courtesy,  civility  and  high  ideals.  They  taught  them  all 
those  nameless  refinements  of  speech  and  manner  which 
impart  a  gracious  flavor  to  association  and  a  charm  to 
companionship. 

I  cannot  help  thinking  that  the  Americans  of  Tucson 
have  profited  very  much  from  their  intercourse  with  the 


BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL.  199 

Mexicans,  for  nowhere  in  the  southwest  have  I  met  a 
more  civil  and  companionable  people. 

The  modern  American  is  so  full  of  the  spirit  of  com 
mercialism  and  the  demon  of  material  progress ;  so  mas 
terful  in  all  that  makes  for  political  expansion  and  the 
achievement  of  great  enterprises,  that  he  is  in  danger  of 
forgetting  his  duties  to  God  and  the  courtesies  of  social 
life. 

To-day  I  took  my  second  stroll  through  the  Mexican 
section  of  Tucson  and  noted  the  slow  but  steady  en 
croachment  of  Anglo-Celtic  influence.  I  saw  with  regret 
that  many  of  the  old  Spanish  names  of  the  streets  had 
disappeared  and  that  other  and  less  euphonious  ones  had 
replaced  them.  The  Calle  Santa  Eita  has  gone  down  in 
the  struggle  to  hold  its  own  with  the  "gringo"  and 
Cherry  street  has  usurped  its  traditional  privileges,  and 
our  good-natured  friend  McKenna  has  his  Celtic  name 
blazoned  where  Santa  Maria  del  Guadeloupe,  by  imme 
morial  right,  ought  to  be. 

But,  with  the  exception  of  these  street  names,  the  adop 
tion  of  a  more  modern  dress,  and  the  absence  of  old  time 
customs,  fiestas  and  ceremonies,  or  their  modification, 
the  people  are  the  same  with  whom  I  mingled  two  years 
ago  in  Zacatecas,  Cuernavaca,  and  other  towns  in  Mexico. 
Here  are  the  narrow  streets,  with  rows  of  one  storied 
flat-roofed  houses  of  sun  baked  brick,  or  adobes,  with 
here  and  there  a  house  whose  floor  is  "rammed"  earth. 
Eemember  that  lumber  here  a  few  years  ago  cost  $80  the 
thousand.  In  early  times  there  were  houses  with  not  a 
solitary  nail  anywhere  in  or  about  them,  for  the  window 
frames  and  doors  were  held  in  place  by  strips  of  rawhide. 
The  women  no  longer  wear  the  many-striped  "Rebozo" 
or  the  "Tapole"  which  concealed  all  the  face  but  the  left 


200  BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL. 

eye.  TBe  Moors,  who  held  possession  of  nearly  one-half 
of  Spain  for  almost  800  years,  grafted  on  the  Iberian 
race  many  of  their  own  customs,  manners  and  Oriental 
dress.  The  Spanish  women  inherited  from  them  the 
"Bebozo,"  the  "Tapole"  and  concealment  of  the  face, 
and  the  Mexican  senoritas  adopted  the  dress  of  their 
Spanish  sisters.  I  found  the  men  leaning,  as  of  old, 
against  the  door  jambs  and  walls  of  the  mescal  shops  t 
smoking  their  soothing  cigarettes,  made  by  rolling  a 
pinch  of  tobacco  in  a  piece  of  corn-husk,  and  apparently 
supremely  happy.  But  I  missed  the  picturesque 
"zarape"  and  the  many  colored  blanket  of  cotton  or 
wool,  and  the  sweeping  sombrero,  wide  as  a  phaeton 
wheel,  and  banded  with  snakes  of  silver  bullion.  Through 
the  ancient  street  of  the  old  pueblo — the  main  street  of 
the  town — there  passed  and  repassed  a  motley  aggrega 
tion  of  quaint  people,  Papago  Indians,  ' '  greasers, ' '  half- 
castes,  Mexicans  and  American  ranchers,  herders  and 
cow-punchers.  You  must  be  careful  here,  for  it  is  yet 
early  in  the  forenoon,  and  the  street  is  filled  with  horses, 
mules  and  burros  loaded  with  wood  or  garden  truck  for 
the  market  and  dealers,  and  with  tawny-complexioned 
men  and  women  carrying  huge  loads  on  their  heads  and 
followed  by  bare-footed  children  and  half-starved  and 
wild  looking  mongrels,  first  cousins  to  the  sneaking  coy 
otes  of  the  Sierras. 

The  sure  sign  of  racial  absorption  comes  when  a  peo 
ple  begin  to  adopt  the  diet  and  cooking  of  the  foreign  ele 
ment  with  whom  they  must  live  and  with  whom  they  must 
associate,  at  least  commercially.  To  test  how  far  this 
process  of  assimilation  and  incorporation  had  already 
advanced  among  the  Mexicans,  I  dined  to-day  at  one  of 
their  restaurants.  Fortunately  or  alas !  it  was  the  same 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  201 

familiar  and  palatable  meal  I  had  so  often  sampled  in 
the  inland  towns  of  the  neighboring  republic.  Beginning 
with  "soppaseca"  or  vegetable  soup,  I  had  my  choice 
of  one  or  all  of  the  dishes  of  "  enchiladas, "  "tamales," 
"tortillas;"  plates  of  "frijoles"  and  "chile  con  came" 
seasoned  with  "chile  Colorado"  or  any  other  kind  of 
pepper.  The  dessert  introduced  "dulces,"  coffee  or 
chocolate,  cheese,  cigarettes  and  Chihuahua  biscuits.  Evi 
dently  after  iii'ly  years  of  occupation  the  absorption  of 
the  Mexican  by  the  Anglo- Celt  is  yet  in  its  intial  stage 
in  Tucson. 

The  "enchilada  "and  the  "tamale"  are  of  Aztec  origin. 
The  enchilada  is  a  cake  of  corn  batter  dipped  in  a  stew 
of  tomatoes,  cheese  and  onions  seasoned  with  pepper 
and  served  steaming  hot.  The  tamale  is  made  from 
chopped  meat,  beef,  pork  or  chicken,  or  a  mixture  of  all 
three,  combined  with  cornmeal,  boiled  or  baked  in  husks 
of  corn.  These  dishes,  when  properly  prepared,  are  de 
licious  and  are  gradually  finding  their  way  to  American 
tables  and  restaurants.  Cooked  as  the  Mexicans  cook 
them,  they  would  be  a  valuable  addition  to  the  admirable 
menus  of  our  eastern  hotels. 

After  dinner  I  visited  the  half  acre  of  ground  which 
was  at  one  time  the  "God's  acre,"  the  last  resting  place 
of  the  early  "comers,"  many  of  whom  died  with  their 
boots  on.  In  those  days — 1855  to  1876 — the  Apaches 
swooped  down  from  their  mountain  lairs,  and  attacking 
the  suburbs  of  the  town  and  the  neighboring  ranchos, 
killed  the  men  and  boys,  -drove  off  the  cattle  and  carried 
back  with  them  the  women  and  children.  As  I  may  have 
to  deal  some  other  time  wth  this  extraordinary  and 
crafty  tribe  and  fierce  race  of  men,  I  will  say  here,  only 
in  anticipation,  that  the  Apaches  of  Arizona  were  the 


202  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

shrewdest  and  most  revengeful  fighters  ever  encoun 
tered  by  white  men  within  the  present  limits  of  the 
United  States.  Fiercer  than  the  mountain  lion,  wilder 
than  the  coyote  he  called  his  brother,  inured  to  great 
fatigue,  to  extreme  suffering  of  soul  and  body,  to  the 
extremes  of  heat  and  cold  and  to  bearing  for  days  and 
nights  the  pangs  of  hunger  and  thirst,  the  Apache  Indian 
was  the  most  terrible  foe  the  wilderness  produced.  In 
those  early  days  this  neglected  piece  of  ground,  /'where 
heaves  the  turf  in  many  a  mouldering  heap,"  recorded 
the  history  of  the  pioneer  days  of  the  American  Tucson. 
The  headboards  marking  the  graves  informed  the  visiting 
stranger  that  this  man  was  "killed  by  the  Apaches, "  this 
one  "died  of  wounds  in  a  fight  with  the  Apaches, "  this 
other  "scalped,  tortured  and  killed  by  the  Apaches," 
and — this  family  in  the  little  corner  of  the  graveyard — 
"this  whole  family,  wife,  husband  and  six  children  was 
wiped  out  by  the  Apaches."  But  these  days  are  gone 
forever ;  the  Apache  is  imprisoned  on  the  reservation  and 
we  may  safely  say  of  him  what  Bourienne  said  over  the 
grave  of  Bonaparte,  "No  sound  can  awake  him  to  glory 
again. ' ' 

To-day,  with  a  population  of  17,000,  and  a  property 
valuation  of  many  millions,  this  city  is  the  social  and 
commercial  oasis  of  Arizona.  The  city  is  well  supplied 
with  churches,  schoolhouses  and  public  institutions.  The 
Carnegie  free  library,  erected  at  a  cost  of  $25,000,  is 
surrounded  by  well  kept  grounds;  it  faces  Washington 
park,  the  military  plaza  of  the  old  Mexican  presidio,  and 
the  largest  public  park  in  the  city.  The  Sisters  of  St. 
Joseph  look  after  the  parochial  schools,  have  a  very  fine 
academy  for  young  ladies  and  conduct  one  of  the  best 
hospitals  of  Arizona.  There  are  twelve  hotels  in  the 


— 'Copyright  by  Underwood  &  Underwood,  New  York. 

"WHITE    EAGLE"    AND    "THE    PUMA"    APACHES    ON    PARADE. 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  203 

city  and,  one  of  them,  the  Santa  Rita,  is  architecturally 
one  of  the  most  novel  buildings  of  the  southwest.  It  is 
named  from  the  Santa  Eita  range  of  mountains  and 
forms,  with  San  Augustin's  Cathedral,  the  most  impos 
ing  structure  in  Tucson.  The  city  council  is  experiment 
ing  in  street  oiling,  not  sprinkling  the  streets  with  oil,  as 
in  San  Diego,  southern  California,  but  soaking  them,  so 
that  the  fine  triturated  sand  forms  with  the  oil  a  fairly 
durable  and  smooth  surface. 

On  these  same  streets  one  is  always  running  up 
against  some  interesting  and  peculiar  varieties  of  the 
Noachic  stock.  Here  are  Chinese  in  quest  of  the  elusive 
dollar,  stage  ghosts  in  Oriental  dress,  quiet,  unobtrusive, 
always  looking  down  on  the  dust  as  if  examining  the 
minute  particles  entering  into  the  composition  of  their 
material  selves,  and  apparently  doing  a  "heap"  of  think 
ing;  here,  also,  is  his  cousin  germain — the  gentle  and 
innocent-looking  Papago  or  Pima  of  the  mysterious  abo 
riginal  race,  sun-scorched  and  wind-tanned  with  long 
coal-black  hair  and  keen  snake-like  eye.  He  is  in  from 
the  reservation  of  San  Xavier  del  Bac,  nine  miles  south 
of  here,  asking  a  dollar  for  a  manufactured  stone  relic 
worth  10  cents.  The  sons  of  Cush,  the  Ethiopian,  mo 
nopolize  the  lucrative  trade  of  shoe  blacking,  guffaws 
and  loud  laughter.  Varieties  of  the  Caucasian  race — 
rare  varieties  many  of  them — half-breeds,  mulattos  and 
Mexican  half-castes,  all  have  right  of  way  and  use  it  on 
the  beautiful  streets  of  Tucson. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

CAMP   OP   THE   CONSUMPTIVES. 

From  the  balcony  of  my  hotel  I  looked  away,  the  morn 
ing  after  I  came  to  Tucson,  to  the  northeast,  where  just 
outside  the  city  limits,  row  upon  row  of  white  tents  break 
the  monotony  of  gray  sand,  mesquite  and  "grease" 
bush.  Here  on  the  desert,  protected  from  the  winds  on 
every  side  by  barriers  of  porphyritic  mountains,  is 
pitched  the  tented  city  of  the  consumptives  or  "lungers" 
as  the  rougher  element  around  here  call  them. 

Here  in  this  canvas-tented  camp  the  victims  of  the 
"white  plague"  and  those  threatened  by  the  monster 
gather  from  all  the  states  of  the  East  and  form  a  com 
munity  by  themselves.  The  white  canvas  of  the  tents 
gruesomely  harmonizes  with  the  pale  faces  of  the  un 
happy  victims  of  the  scourge.  Farther  away  to  the  east 
I  see  white  specks  here  and  there  on  the  foothills  of  the 
Catalinas.  I  ask  a  gentleman  by  my  side  what  these  dots 
are  and  he  courteously  answers:  "These  are  the  tents 
of  the  isolators  who  wish  to  live  alone  and  live  their  own 
lives  in  their  own  way." 

To-day  I  visited  the  camp  or  reservation  of  the  con 
sumptives.  I  seldom  carry  a  letter  of  introduction,  for 
I  am  one  of  those  who  depend  much  upon  an  accidental 
acquaintance.  As  I  go  wandering  through  the  world  I 
see  many  a  face  whose  mild  eyes  and  sweet,  placid  feat 
ures  bespeak  a  gentle  mind  and  a  candid  soul.  Such  a 
face  as  this  is  worth  more  than  a  dozen  of  letters  of  in 
troduction,  for  written  on  it  is  the  assurance  of  civility 
and  kindness.  In  any  case  I  knew  no  one  here  to  whom 


206  BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL. 

I  could  appeal  for  an  introduction  to  any  one  in  the  camp. 
The  tents  are  of  cotton  or  ship  canvas,  with  broad  floors 
of  "  rammed "  earth,  or  simply  rugs  laid  upon  the  dry 
sand.  They  are  of  varying  sizes,  furnished  and  orna 
mented  according  to  the  means  or  tastes  of  the  occu 
pants.  Most  of  them  are  divided  into  kitchen,  living  and 
sleeping  apartments.  In  some,  the  gloom  of  the  "  liv 
ing  "  room  was  relieved  by  the  bright  colors  of  a  few 
Navajo  blankets  or  Mohave  rugs.  In  others  were  photo 
graphs  of  the  dear  ones  at  home,  little  framed  titbits  of 
western  scenery,  illustrated  souvenir  cards  from  Euro 
pean  and  eastern  friends  and  caged  California  road- 
runners  or  Arizona  mocking  birds.  Here  also  were 
earthenware  jars  called  "ollas"  holding  water  which 
cools  by  evaporation,  banjos,'  zithers  and  guitars,  lying 
on  the  table  or  suspended  from  the  sides  of  the  tents.  Now 
and  then  you  entered  an  apartment  where  an  accumula 
tion  of  Papago  bows  and  arrows,  obsidian  tipped  lances, 
Apache  quivers  and  Moqui  stone  hatchets  advertise  the 
archaeological  taste  of  the  proprietor.  Occasionally  I 
entered  a  tent  where  the  limited  means  of  the  owner  or 
renter  allowed  him  or  her  few  luxuries.  To  be  poor  is 
not  a  disgrace  nor  ought  it  to  be  a  humiliation,  but  there 
are  times  and  places  when  to  be  poor — I  do  not'  say  pov 
erty — is  very  trying  to  the  human  soul  and  galling  to  the 
independent  mind.  Without  money  and  a  liberal  supply 
of  it  no  consumptive  should  come  here.  In  the  tent  of 
the  young  man  or  woman  of  limited  resources  was  a 
single  cot,  or  perhaps  two,  an  ordinary  chair  and  a 
'* rocker, "  a  trunk,  a  small  pine  wash  stand,  an  oil  stove, 
a  looking-glass  and  maybe  a  few  books  and  magazines. 
Now  and  then  the  purest  and  gentlest  of  breezes  merrily 
tossed  the  flaps  and  flies  of  the  tent,  and  a  harmless  and 


BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL.  207 

wondrously  colored  little  lizard,  called  by  the  Mexicans 
"chiquita,"  coquetted  with  the  magazines  on  the  table. 

The  patients  who  are  here  taking  the  "air"  treatment 
rarely  enter  the  city.  Every  morning,  from  6  to  12, 
butchers,  milkmen,  grocery  boys  and  Chinese  vegetable 
hawkers  make  the  rounds  of  the  camp  and  isolated  tents. 
They  are  all  here,  the  rich,  the  middling  rich  and  the 
comparatively  poor  putting  up  a  brave  fight  against  an 
insidious,  treacherous  foe — "not  so  well  to-day,  but  to 
morrow,  to-morrow,  we'll  be  better" — always  nursing 
tEe  consumptive's  longing  and  cherishing  the  "hope  that 
spring's  eternal  in  the  human  breast."  "What's  the  per 
centage  of  the  cured?"  I  do  not  know,  I  may  only  say 
that  if  pure,  dry  air  can  accomplish  anything  for  dis 
eased  lungs,  you  have  it  here  day  and  night  abundantly. 
Neither  Spain,  Italy  or  Southern  France  may  compare 
with  Southern  Arizona  in  dryness  and  balminess  of  cli 
mate,  and  I  write  with  the  knowledge  of  one  who  is  fa 
miliar  with  the  climates  of  these  countries.  I  know  not 
any  place  on  earth  better  for  pulmonary  and  nervous 
diseases  than  the  desert  lands  around  Tucson  from  No 
vember  to  April.  Bear  in  mind  I  am  not  recommending 
any  man  or  woman  to  come  here  in  the  final  stages  of 
disease  nor  any  one  whose  purse  is  not  large,  deep  and 
well  filled,  for  druggists'  and  doctors'  bills,  groceries 
and  incidentals  are  "away  up"  and  almost  out  of  sight. 

The  winter  nights  here  are  cool  and  bracing,  and  the 
early  mornings  sharp  when  a  gasoline  or  oil  stove  is  a 
most  convenient  piece  of  furniture.  But  from  8  in  the 
morning  to  4  in  the  afternoon  every  day  in  winter  is  a 
delight  and  the  air  an  atmospheric  dream.  The  sum 
mers  are  hot,  "confoundedly  'ot,"  to  use  a  Wellerism, 
when  the  heat  will  at  times  run  the  mercury  up  to  120 


208  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

Fahrenheit.  There  have  been  weeks  here  in  the  summer 
when  the  thermometer  would  register  98  degrees  day  and 
night.  But  remember  there  would  be  only  20  per  cent 
moisture  in  the  air.  In  the  eastern  states  such  heat 
would  wear  down  men  and  animals.  A  canvas  tent  of 
fair  size  costs  anywhere  from  $60  to  $100  or  a  tent  may 
be  rented  including  site  for  from  $15  to  $30  a  month, 
counting  in  a  little  cheap  furniture.  People  soon  learn 
to  do  their  own  cooking,  and  after  a  time  begin  to  live 
with  reasonable  economy.  There  is  an  electric  road  run 
ning  from  the  camp  to  the  city,  the  fare  for  the  return 
trip  being  10  cents.  In  this  tented  village  are  men  and 
women  of  all  ages,  but  chiefly  the  young  and  the  middle 
aged  who,  in  the  words  of  the  Psalmist,  are  "suffering 
hard  things  and  drinking  the  wine  of  sorrow/'  It  is 
very  lonely  here  for  many  and  wearisome,  and  this  feel 
ing  of  loneliness  engenders  a  sadness  which  is  often 
more  fatal  than  disease,  for  the  splendid  air  cannot  reach 
it.  Away  from  home  and  friends,  the  human  heart 
craves  companionship  and  those  who  at  home  are  natu 
rally  reserved,  and  socially  exclusive,  here  become  com 
panionable  and  invite  conversation.  For  some,  life  here 
is  very  trying  indeed;  it  is  so  lonesome,  so  monotonous 
to  live,  day  by  day,  this  life  of  sameness  and  unchanging 
routine  unredeemed  by  variety  and  unblessed  by  pleas 
ant  association.  This  isolation  bears  in  upon  the  soul; 
it  tires  of  its  own  thoughts  which,  even  if  pleasant,  carry 
a  note  of  sadness.  There  are  here  and  there  in  the  camp 
human  souls,  imprisoned  in  their  decomposing  bodies, 
that  are  by  nature  melancholy  and  given  to  brooding. 
They  become  morose  in  their  thoughts  and  drift  into 
th?l  pituul  condition  described  by  the  Eoyal  Prophet 
when  the  sorrowful  soul  communes  with  itself  and  in 


BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL.  209 

despair  exclaims,  "I  looked  for  one  that  would  grieve 
with  me  and  there  was  none;  and  for  one  that  would 
cc  mfort  me  and  I  found  no  one." 

The  days  are  so  long,  so  full  of  melancholy  forebod 
ings,  of  pleasant  and  unpleasant  memories,  of  fears  of 
dissolution  and  the  hope  of  life;  and  after  the  day  tEe 
wearisome  night  and  intermittent  slumbers,  and  even 
these  broken  with  hacking  coughs,  with  the  dreaded 
chills  and  burning  fever,  and,  perhaps,  unwelcome 
dreams. 

Here  each  human  will  is .  putting  up  a  brave  fight 
against  treacherous  and  insidious  foes,  fiendishly  cun 
ning  in  their  methods  of  attack.  It  is  the  combat  of  the 
body  against  millions  of  bacterial  activities,  of  micro 
scopic  parasites,  which,  living,  feed  upon  the  lungs,  and 
when  dead  poison  the  blood.  In  this  unequal  fight  for 
life  the  soul  is  ever  active,  helping  the  body — its  yet  liv 
ing  tabernacle  and  beloved  companion — with  hope,  with 
splendid  determination,  and  whispering  to  it  with  un 
quenchable  love,  "What  magnificent  help  this  friendly 
air  of  Arizona  is  giving  us."  Then  the  body  has  an 
other  friend,  severe,  if  you  will,  but  a  friend — the  ter 
rible  cough,  that  racks  the  body  with  heroic  determina 
tion  to  tear  out  the  dead  and  decaying  bacteria  poisoning 
the  human  temple.  And  now, 

"Swing  outward,  ye  gates  of  the  future; 

Swing  inward,  ye  gates  of  the  past, 
For  the  dark  shades  of  night  are  retiring, 
And  the  white  lights  are  breaking  at  last. ' ' 

The  therapeutic  air  and  loving  soul  are  winning  out. 
The  cough  is  bidding  good-bye  to  the  body,  its  help  is 
no  longer  required,  the  dreaded  night  sweats  have  van- 


210  BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL. 

ished  and  the   soul,   rejoicing,   says  to  its   companion, 
"The  battle  is  won;  the  field  is  ours." 

In  one  tent,  into  which  I  was  invited  by  the  mother, 
reclined  on  the  lounge  her  daughter,  a  fair  young  girl 
of  18  or  20.  She  sat  up  as  we  entered,  and  when  I  was 
introduced  she  courteously  extended  to  me  her  hand, 
which  left  upon  my  own  a  sensation  of  wetness.  Her 
conversation,  address  and  bearing  indicated  a  convent 
training  and  a  cultivated  mind.  Her  blue  eyes,  the  fever 
flush  on  her  cheeks,  and  her  wealth  of  rich,  auburn  hair, 
sadly  reminded  me  of  the  " Norman  Peasant's  Daugh 
ter,  ' '  immortalized  by  the  Irish  poet,  Thomas  Davis : 

"To  Munster's  vale  they  brought  her 

To  the  cool  and  balmy  air, 
A  Norman  peasant's  daughter 

With  blue  eyes  and  golden  hair. 
They  brought  her  to  the  valley, 

And  she  faded,  slowly,  there, 
Consumption  has  no  pity 

For  blue  eyes  and  golden  hair." 

The  tent  erected  to  shield  "from  sunbeam  and  from 
rain  the  one  beloved  head,"  bore  in  its  furnishment  and 
decorations  testimony  that  the  hand  which  hung  the  etch 
ings  and  photographs  and  the  taste  which  arranged  the 
rugs  and  furniture,  were  directed  by  a  refined  and  culti 
vated  mind.  The  young  lady  has  been  here  but  five 
weeks,  and  already  is  beginning  to  experience  a  change 
for  the  better.  May  she  and  her  companion  in  suffering 
return  home  restored  to  health  and  to  the  possession  of 
many  years  of  happiness. 

It  is  well  to  remember  that  Arizona  is  a  very  large  ter 
ritory — 114,000  square  miles — and  that  all  of  it  is  not  to 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  211 

be  recommended  for  diseased  lungs  or  shattered  nerves. 
There  are  broad  stretches  of  desert  where  the  winds 
raise  clouds  of  finest  dust ;  there  are  towering  mountains 
and  startling  canyons  and  gloomy  ravines.  There  are 
sections  of  the  land  which  exude  baleful  malaria,  and 
places  black,  for  miles  and  miles,  with  solid  waves  of 
lava,  recording  the  elemental  confusion  of  fire  and  steam 
and  exploding  gases  in  days  gone  by.  But,  I  am  told  by 
those  who  have  explored  the  territory — by  pioneers  of 
the  early  times — that  the  sand  and  gravel  beds  of  the 
Tucson  valley  are  ideal  grounds  for  consumptives  and 
neurasthenics,  or  people  of  shattered  nerves.  From 
what  I  know  of  other  lands  and  other  climates,  I  believe 
the  pioneers  are  right. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

THE  OSTEICH  FABM  AND  THE  SALTON  SEA. 

The  American  people  live  in  the  most  wonderful  of  all 
lands,  and  do  not  seem  to  realize  the  glory  of  their  pos 
session.  They  cross  oceans  and  girdle  foreign  countries 
in  quest  of  strange  scenes;  they  fill  the  art  galleries  of 
Europe  to  view  the  productions  of  the  sculptor  and  the 
painter,  when  here,  within  their  own  domain,  unseen  and 
unappreciated,  are  marvels  of  nature  baffling  all  descrip 
tive  art,  wonderful  creations  of  God  challenging  the  pen 
of  the  poet,  and  the  possibilities  of  the  brush  of  genius. 

While  traveling  through  this  wonderful  territory  I 
was  asked  if  I  had  seen  the  ostrich  farms  on  the  Salt 
Eiver  valley.  I  had  to  answer  that  I  had  not,  and  in 
every  instance  I  was  urgently  pressed  to  visit  the  feed 
ing  grounds  of  this  strange  bird  before  leaving  Arizona. 
I  came  to  Phoenix  last  week  to  enjoy  a  few  days  of  indo 
lent  ease  before  starting  for  the  wilds  of  Sonora,  Mexico, 
and  the  hunting  grounds  of  the  terrible  Yaquis,  of  whom 
you  have  heard.  Not  far  from  Phoenix  there  is  an  os 
trich  farm,  where  1,000  birds  are  annually  surrendering 
to  the  "plnckers"  $30,000  worth  of  feathers  and  eggs.  I 
am  not  going  to  inflict  upon  my  readers  any  detailed 
description  of  the  wired  farm  enclosing  these  1,000  Af 
rican  birds,  nor  of  the  pens  of  the  birds,  nor  the  topo 
graphical  features  of  the  land,  but  will  simply  record 
what  I  have  seen  and  learned  of  the  ostrich  at  the  colony 
I  visited. 

But  first  let  me  correct  some  mistakes  and  errors  our 
story  books  and  school  books  have  handed  down  to  us 


214  BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL. 

about  the  ostrich  and  his  habits.  This  singular  bird, 
when  pursued  by  man  or  animal,  does  not  bury  his  head 
in  the  sand  and  suppose  that,  because  the  ostrich  cannot 
see  its  enemy,  the  enemy  cannot  see  it.  The  ostrich, 
when  in  condition,  can  out-run  and  out-dodge  almost  any 
thing  traveling  on  two  or  four  feet.  This  was/  well 
known  to  the  ancients,  for  the  Patriach  Job  instances  the 
fleetness  of  the  ostrich  in  proof  of  God's  kindness: 
"For,  if  God  hath  deprived  the  ostrich  of  wisdom,  nor 
gave  her  understanding,  when  the  time  calls  for  it,  she 
setteth  up  her  wings  on  high.  She  scorneth  the  horse 
and  his  rider."  When  driven  to  close  quarters  and 
forced  to  defend  himself,  this  extraordinary  bird  is  a 
fierce  fighter,  and  very  few  wild  animals  care  to  attack 
him. 

She  does  not  lay  two  eggs  on  the  hot  desert,  hide  them 
with  a  thin  covering  of  sand  and  trust  to  luck  or  the 
sun  to  hatch  them.  She  does  not  and  cannot  live  for 
eight  or  ten  months  under  pressure  of  great  heat  and 
feel  no  thirst.  When  compelled  by  circumstances,  the  os 
trich  can  live  a  long  time  without  water,  perhaps  a  month 
or  six  weeks,  but  it  cannot  live,  as  one  of  our  encyclope 
dias  tells  us,  a  year  without  water.  We  always  believed 
our  story  books  and  books  of  travel  when  they  told  us 
that  the  male  ostrich,  like  our  barn-yard  rooster,  always 
strutted  around,  escorted  by  eight  or  ten  wives.  The 
ostrich  has  but  one  mate,  and,  if  the  female  dies  after 
they  have  lived  together  for  some  time,  the  male  bird  is 
inconsolable  and  will  sometimes  pine  away  and  die. 
The  average  life  of  the  ostrich  is  75  years,  but  after 
twenty-five  years  they  bear  no  feathers  of  commercial 
value. 

The  writer  of  the  article  in  the  encyclopedia,  which  I 


BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL.  215 

mentioned  above,  says  the  ostrich  lays  only  two  eggs  a 
year,  and  that  the  female  plucks  out  the  feathers  of  the 
male  twice  a  year.  The  African  ostrich  may  do  all  these 
things,  but  his  descendants  now  in  California  and  Ari 
zona  have  abandoned  the  habits  of  their  primitive  ances 
tors  and  have  conformed  to  modern  conditions.  The  os 
trich  lays  from  twelve  to  sixteen  eggs  in  a  shallow  hole, 
which  the  male  bird  has  scooped  out  in  a  place  conve 
nient  for  hatching.  They  are  large  eggs,  and,  for  forty- 
two  days,  the  birds  cover  them  alternately,  the  male  by 
night  and  the  female  by  day.  By  a  mysterious  laF  of 
adaptation,  the  color  of  the  female,  when  brooding,  is 
that  of  the  desert  sand,  while  that  of  her  mate,  which 
sets  upon  the  eggs  at  night,  is  pitch  black.  This  marvel 
ous  provision  of  nature  helps  to  conceal  the  birds  dur 
ing  the  period  of  incubation  from  the  eyes  of  prowling 
enemies.  The  chicks,  when  hatched,  after  a  few  days, 
are  taken  from  the  parents  and  confined  in  pens,  where 
they  are  fed,  and,  until  they  can  forage  for  themselves, 
raised  by  hand.  If  this  were  not  done,  many  of  the 
young  birds  would  perish,  for  the  parent  ostriches  seem 
to  be  indifferent  to  the  fate  of  the  little  ones  after  they 
are  hatched.  It  is  to  this  apparent  callousness  of  the 
ostrich  the  Patriarch  Job  alludes  when  he  says,  "She  is 
hardened  against  her  young  ones  as  though  they  were 
not  hers ; ' '  and  the  Prophet  Jeremias,  when  he  compares 
the  ingratitude  of  Jerusalem  to  the  indifference  of  the 
ostrich  to  her  young:  "The  daughter  of  my  people  is 
cruel,  like  the  ostrich  in  the  desert. ' ' 

The  young  birds  are  delicate  when  they  come  from  the 
shell  and  demand  careful  treatment  until  they  are  six  or 
seven  weeks  old,  when  they  become  independent,  take  a 
firm  hold  on  life  and  hustle  for  themselves.  A  two- 


216  BY  PATH  AND  TBAIL. 

months-old  chick  is  always  hungry,  he  is  pecking  and 
eating  every  moment  he  is  awake,  and  will  devour  more 
food  than  a  grown  bird.  They  grow  fast,  gaining  a  foot 
a  month  in  height  for  six  or  seven  months.  Some  of  the 
birds  on  the  Salt  river  farms  are  eight  and  nine  feet 
from  the  head  to  the  ground,  and  weigh  from  400  to 
500  pounds.  Some  one  has  said  that  facts  are  some 
times  stranger  than  fiction,  and  in  the  wonderful  provis 
ion  made  by  nature  for  the  perpetuation  of  the  ostrich, 
the  saying  becomes  an  aphorism.  The  first  three  eggs 
laid  by  this  singular  bird  are  sterile  and  will  not  hatch. 
By  a  wonderful  law  of  instinct,  or  call  it  what  we  will, 
the  mother  lays  these  eggs  outside  the  nest.  There  is  a 
deep  and  mysterious  law  of  nature  compelling  the  bird 
to  follow  this  command  of  instinct.  On  the  African  des 
erts,  when  the  nesting  time  draws  near,  the  birds  retire 
into  the  most  lonely  and  unfrequented  parts  of  the  soli 
tary  and  desolate  region,  far  away  from  the  haunts  of 
beast  and  man,  and  from  water.  Now  when  the  little 
creature,  the  chicken,  is  liberated  from  its  prison  by  the 
bursting  of  its  walls,  it  is  very  thirsty  and  craves  for 
water  or  anything  to  slake  its  thirst.  But  there  is  no 
water.  The  mother  looks  upon  its  gasping  offspring 
with  its  tiny  tongue  protruding,  carries  it  over  to  where 
a  sterile  egg  is  lying  in  the  sand,  breaks  the  shell,  and  at 
once  the  little  perishing  creature  buries  its  head  in  the 
opened  egg,  sucks  in  the  liquid  refreshment  and  lives. 
The  next  day  the  little  thing  staggers  by  itself  to  the 
wonderful  fountain  of  the  desert,  and  the  day  after  it  is 
able  to  walk  straight  upright  to  the  well. 

On  the  ostrich  farms  or  alfalfa  ranges  of  Arizona, 
the  young  birds  are  taken  away  and  raised  by  hand,,  the 
barren  eggs  gathered  by  the  keeper  and  sold  for  $1.00 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  217 

each.  There  is  another  very  singular  thing  about  the 
wonderful  knowledge,  or  instinct,  of  the  ostrich.  If  an 
egg  is  removed  from  her  nest  while  she  is  hatching,  and 
a  sterile  egg,  heated  to  the  same  temperature  as  eggs  on 
which  sHe  is  setting  and  of  the  same  color  and  size  sub 
stituted,  she  will  at  once  detect  the  change  and  roll  the 
egg  out.  If  all  the  eggs  in  the  nest  be  taken  away  and 
sterile  eggs  put  in  their  places,  the  mother  will  abandon 
the  nest  and  lay  no  more  for  months.  If  you  ask  me  for 
an  explanation  of  the  origin  of  this  marvelous  and  mys 
terious  sense,  I  can  only  answer  in  the  words  of  the  in 
spired  writer:  "This  is  the  Lord's  doing,  and  it  is  won 
derful  in  our  eyes." 

About  fifteen  eggs  is  the  average  "  setting, "  and  the 
period  of  incubation  forty-two  days.  The  male  bird  takes 
upon  himself  the  heavier  labor  of  the  contract.  He  takes 
charge  of  the  nest  and  assumes  control  of  the  work  at 
5  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  and  stays  with  his  job  'til 
9  o'clock  in  the  morning,  when  the  female  relieves  him. 
At  noon  he  returns  and  keeps  house  for  an  hour  while 
his  partner  goes  for  her  lunch.  The  male  bird  turns  the 
eggs  once  every  twenty-four  hours.  Incubators  have 
been  lately  introduced  and  are  giving  satisfaction.  The 
chicks,  when  two  weeks  old,  sell  for  $25  each,  and 
when  four  years  of  age  a  pair,  male  and  female,  sell  for 
from  $400  to  $600. 

The  birds  do  not  differ  in  appearance  until  they  are 
eighteen  months  old,  at  that  age  they  take  on  an  alto 
gether  different  plumage;  the  male  arraying  himself  in 
black  and  the  female  in  drab.  When  six  months  old,  the 
birds  experience  the  sensation  of  their  rfrst  plucking, 
and  after  that  they  give  up  their  plumes  every  eighi 
months.  Not  until  the  third  plucking  do  the  feathers 


218  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

bring  much  in  the  market ;  the  first  and  second  pluckings 
selling  for  a  few  shillings.  A  healthy  ostrich  will  yield 
$30  worth  of  feathers  every  year  for  twenty-five  years, 
though  the  average  life  of  the  bird  is  seventy-five  years. 
Many  hundreds  of  young  birds  roam  over  alfalfa  fields 
enclosed  with  wire  netting.  Breeding  pairs  are  confined 
in  a  two-acre  enclosure.  The  range  birds  feed,  like  cat 
tle,  on  alfalfa  grass,  picking  up  quartz  pebbles  which  are 
scattered  over  the  fields  for  their  use,  and  which,  for 
them,  serves  the  same  end  as  gravel  for  hens  and  chick 
ens.  When  the  hens  are  laying  they  are  given,  from 
time  to  time,  a  diet  of  bone  dust  to  help  in  strengthening 
the  egg  shells.  One  of  the  most  singular  and  inter 
esting  habits  of  the  ostrich  is  his  daily  exercise. 
Every  morning  at  sunrise  the  herd,  two  by  two,  begin 
training  for  the  day  by  indulging  in  a  combination  cake- 
walk  and  Virginia  reel.  Thenin  single  file  they  race  around 
the  pasture  till  they  are  thoroughly  limbered  up.  When 
halting,  they  form  in  squares  and  begin  to  dance,  intro 
ducing  imitations  of  the  waltz,  negro  break-downs,  cake- 
walks  and  hornpipes.  It  is  a  laughable  and  grotesque 
performance,  and,  when  the  birds  are  in  full  plumage 
and  their  wings  extended,  not  devoid  of  grace  and  beauty 
of  action.  The  ostrich  is  the  ornithological  goat.  He 
will  eat  and  digest  anything.  Offer  him  a  large  San 
Diego  orange,  and  he'll  swallow  it  whole.  Grease  an  old 
shoe  with  tamarind  oil,  throw  it  into  the  paddock  where 
the  birds  feed,  and  at  once  there  is  a  struggle  for  its 
possession,  ending  in  the  complete  disappearance  of  the 
brogan  in  its  entirety  or  in  fragments.  The  salvation 
of  the  ostrich  are  its  plumes.  His  feathers  have  saved 
him  from  the  fate  of  extinct  birds  and  animals  like  the 
great  auk  and  the  Siberian  mammoth.  He  is  destined  to 


BY  PATH  AND  TKAIL.  219 

last  to  the  end  of  time,  or  to  the  effacement  of  vanity 
from  the  heart  of  woman — a  weakness  of  the  sex  which 
began  with  time  and  will  only  end  when  time  shall  be  no 
more.  He  is  the  only  bird  or  animal  that  can  live  and 
be  healthy  on  grass,  grain,  fruits,  vegetables,  fish,  flesh, 
or  leather. 

A  few  weeks  before  coming  to  Phoenix  I  was  told  that 
the  great  Colorado  river  broke  away  from  its  own  chan 
nel,  was  filling  the  Salton  Sink,  and  threatening  to 
eventually  destroy  the  homes  and  farms  of  12,000  pros 
perous  settlers.  When  I  reached  Yuma,  this  morning, 
I  learned  for  the  first  time  that,  if  the  river  was  not 
turned  back,  an  inland  sea  would  form,  and  the  climate  of 
southern  Arizona  and  southeastern  California  change.  Bancroft  Li 

North  of  the  Mexican  boundary  is  a  splendid  tract  of 
land  known  as  Imperial  Valley,  homesteaded  by  10,000 
families.  The  chief  towns — Imperial,  Holtville,  Heber 
and  Brawley — are  all  now  thriving  and  prosperous. 
South  of  the  border  is  an  area  of  land  equal  to  that  of 
Imperial  valley  in  fertility  and  productiveness,  belonging 
to  the  Colorado  Eiver  Development  Company.  The 
principal  canal  of  the  great  irrigating  system  leaves  the 
Colorado  river  a  few  miles  below  Yuma  at  an  elevation 
of  100  feet  above  the  sea,  and  crossing  the  Mexican  fron 
tier,  flows  eastward  into  Imperial  valley.  The  town 
of  Imperial,  almost  in  the  center  of  the  valley,  is  six 
ty-two  feet  lower  than  the  ocean,  and  the  grade  contin 
ues  to  fall  till  at  Salton  Sink  it  is  down  to  287  feet  be 
low  sea  level.  This  decline  gives  a  rapid  current  to  the 
flowing  waters,  and  the  opening  in  the  river  bank  has- 
grown  so  wide  that  it  will  take  much  time  and  millions 
to  close  it.  If  the  break  be  not  repaired,  the  Imperial 
valley  and  the  entire  Colorado  desert  of  southern  Cali- 


220  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

fornia  up  to  the  ancient  beaches  on  the  inclosing  moun 
tains,  will  become  submerged  and  a  great  lake  formed  at 
the  end  of  twenty  years.  So,  at  least  the  engineers  of  the 
Southern  Pacific  and  the  hydrographers  now  here  assure 
me. 

The  new  sea  now  forming  in  the  desert  lands  of  Ari 
zona,  Mexico  and  California  is  one  of  the  most  extra 
ordinary  assisted  natural  phenomena  of  modern  times. 
It  has  changed  the  course  of  one  of  the  greatest  rivers 
of  the  West,  has  forced  one  of  the  greatest  railroads  in 
the  world  to  move  back,  and  back  and  back  again,  is  con 
verting  a  desert  into  an  inland  sea,  may  possibly  change 
the  climate  of  a  great  territory,  and  even  involve  two 
friendly  nations  in  diplomatic  controversy. 

Back  of  all  is  the  sinister  suspicion  that  behind  the 
opening  is  a  deep-laid  plot  to  acquire  by  purchase  from 
Mexico  an  important  slice  of  Lower  California.  This 
suspicion  has  probably  reached  the  ears  of  the  President, 
who  is  above  trickery  and  treachery,  and  may  account 
for  his  "rush  order "  to  Mr.  Harriman  of  the  Southern 
Pacific  to  "close  the  breach;  count  not  the  cost,  but  close 
the  breach. ' '  It  will  be  closed. 

This  morning  I  sailed  over  the  ruins  and  roofs  of  some 
of  the  buildings  of  Salton  Sink,  where  a  few  years  ago 
were  the  greatest  salt  works  and  evaporating  pans  in 
America.  Where  three  years  ago  there  was  a  desolate 
and  forbidding  wilderness,  there  is  now  a  lake  twenty- 
three  miles  wide,  fifty  miles  long,  in  places  forty  feet 
deep  and  forced  by  the  inrush  of  the  waters  of  the  Gila 
and  Colorado  rivers,  is  rising  nearly  one  inch  every 
twenty-four  hours.  The  break  is  in  the  banks  of  an  irri 
gating  canal  a  few  miles  south  of  Yuma,  Ariz.  Three 
miles  above  this  town,  the  Colorado  opens  its  side  and 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  221 

takes  in  the  Gila  river,  and  from  there  the  flow  sweeps  on 
1(JO  miles  to  the  Gulf  of  California. 

Possibly  the  most  ambitious  attempt  at  irrigation  of 
arid  lands  ever  undertaken  by  private  enterprise  was 
that  of  the  California  Development  Company,  which 
promised  its  shareholders  to  irrigate,  by  gravity,  from 
the  Colorado  river,  800,000  acres  of  desert  land,  one- 
fourth  of  which  belongs  to  Mexico.  The  company  was 
capitalized  at  $1,250,000.  This  company  began  opera 
tions  in  April,  1897,  and  in  six  years  villages  and  towns 
sprang  into  life,  and  where  a  few  years  ago  there  was  a 
desert,  there  are  now  fertile  farms,  orange  and  lime 
groves  and  comfortable  homes,  occupied  by  thousands 
of  industrious  and  contented  people.  A  canal,  called  the 
Alamo,  was  dredged  from  the  Colorado  through  the  sand 
lands,  and  from  this  canal,  by  auxiliary  ditches,  was  fur 
nished  water  for  irrigating  the  farms. 

When  the  Colorado  river  was  low,  the  canal  was  slug 
gish  in  its  flow,  the  channel  and  subsidiary  trenches  filled 
with  silt,  and  the  settlers  became  clamorous.  Then  the 
company  opened  a  second  intake,  known  as  the  Imperial, 
which  connected  the  Colorado  with  the  Alamo  canal. 
Here,  and  now,  is  where  the  trouble  begins.  Neither  suf 
ficiently  strong  nor  perfected  headgates,  wing-dams  or 
bulkheads  were  constructed,  and,  when,  in  the  spring  of 
1903,  the  Colorado,  swollen  from  mountain  and  tributary 
streams,  came  rushing  to  the  sea,  it  swept  the  artificial 
works  aside  and  entered  upon  its  present  career  of  de 
vastation. 

About  this  time  a  series  of  sharp,  quick  and  rotary 
earthquakes  rocked  the  country  and  opened  a  gash  in 
the  Colorado  above  the  Imperial  weir.  From  this  open 
ing  the  waters  poured  into  what  is  now  known  as  the 


222  BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL. 

new  river,  and  onwards,  almost  due  north,  to  Salton 
basin,  seventy-five  miles  away. 

Salton  Basin  was  a  vast  depression  in  the  earth's  sur 
face,  sinking  from  sea  level  to  287  feet  below.  It  wid 
ened  over  two  counties  of  southern  California  and 
stretched  well  into  Mexico,  forming  a  huge  depression  be 
tween  well  defined  "  beaches "  of  an  ancient  sea,  and 
covered  an  approximate  area  of  fifteen  to  forty  miles 
wide  and  about  100  miles  long.  There  is  no  doubt  but 
that  at  some  time  in  the  past  this  sunken  desert  was  an 
extension  of  the  Gulf  of  California. 

From  a  point  near  the  boundary  line  to  the  gulf,  a  dis 
tance  of  about  eighty-five  miles,  lies  the  delta  of  the  Col 
orado,  a  rich  alluvial  plain  of  great  depth,  equal  in  pro 
ductivity  to  the  delta  of  the  Nile ;  a  vast  area,  apparently 
as  level  as  a  table,  built  up  by  the  Colorado  river,  that  has 
drawn  its  material  from  the  plains  of  Wyoming,  through 
Green  river,  and,  adding  to  it  all  down  through  Colorado, 
Utah  and  Arizona,  deposited  it  on  the  new  land  it  was 
forming  at  the  end  of  its  flow. 

This  is  the  first  time  in  its  history  that  the  Colorado 
has  changed  its  course,  and  all  efforts  of  men  and  money 
of  the  great  Southern  Pacific  and  the  giant  irrigation 
companies  have  failed  to  coax  or  force  it  back  to  its 
natural  bed.  A  river  that  has  flowed  on  through  the 
ages,  laughing  at  all  obstacles,  tearing  the  hearts  out  of 
opposing  mountains  and  ripping  for  itself  in  places  a 
channel  a  mile  deep,  and,  in  places,  leagues  wide,  is  not 
going  to  be  turned  aside  easily.  Great  is  the  strength  of 
the  Southern  Pacific ;  enormous  is  the  power  of  corporate 
wealth;  cunning  is  the  brain  and  deft  the  hand  of  the 
American,  but  as  yet  the  strength  of  the  Southern  Pa 
cific,  the  power  of  corporate  wealth,  combined  with  the 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  223 

shrewdness  and  clearness  of  the  American  brain,  have 
not  been  able  to  subdue  that  turbid,  treacherous,  sullen 
river,  the  Eio  Colorado. 

Three  times,  at  a  cost  of  a  half  million  of  dollars,  the 
Southern  Pacific  has  wrenched  apart  and  moved  back 
its  trunk  line,  twenty,  thirty,  and  now,  through  a  cloud 
of  profanity,  seventy-five  miles  from  its  lawful  bed.  Al 
ready  Salton,  with  all  its  buildings,  its  vast  evaporating 
pans  and  improvements,  is  submerged,  and  fertile  farms 
and  ranch  lands  are  destroyed,  it  may  be,  for  all  time. 
The  towns  and  improved  lands  of  Imperial  valley,  the 
grazing  lands  of  the  Pioto  region  of  Lower  California, 
Mexico,  and  millions  of  dollars  invested  in  railroad  and 
other  valuable  securities  are  threatened,  and  to  save 
them  may  call  for  the  co-operation  of  two  nations  and 
the  expenditure  of  an  enormous  sum  of  money.  The 
whole  territory,  from  the  Chuckawalla  mountains  and 
far  south  of  "the  Mexican  frontier,  is  menaced  with  anni 
hilation. 

Unless  the  inrush  of  the  Colorado  Is  checked,  it  is  very 
probable  that  the  Salton  sea  and  the  Gulf  of  California 
will  again  form  one  great  body  of  water. 

This  means  that  the  inland  desert  will  become  a  great 
gulf  where,  a  few  years  since,  there  was  a  field  of  sand 
120  miles  from  the  sea. 

Thus,  sometimes,  do  natural  phenomena,  in  time, 
make  for  the  prosperity  or  decadence  of  a  nation.  In 
spite  of  evaporation,  the  profanity  of  the  Southern  Pa 
cific  shareholders,  and  the  herculean  attacks  of  2,000 
laborers,  led  by  expert  hydraulic  engineers,  the  inland 
sea  is  widening,  for  the  waters  of  the  great  river  are 
rushing  to  its  assistance  at  the  rate  of  8,000  cubic  feet 
per  second.  This  is  the  volume  at  the  lowest  stage  of 


224  BY  PATH  AND  TEAIL. 

the  water ;  the  spring  freshets  will  swell  it  to  50,000  feet, 
for  that  is  the  average  high  flow  of  the  river. 

At  present  the  new  inland  lake  is  a  beautiful  sheet  of 
water,  and  is  a  never  failing  source  of  wonder  to  Eastern 
tourists  after  crossing  hundreds  of  miles  of  arid  wastes, 
of  sand,  greasewood  and  cactus.  To  the  west,  from  the 
fond-du-lac  or  foot  of  the  lake,  tower  the  snow-capped 
peaks  of  Mount  San  Bernardino  and  Mount  San  lacinto, 
each  about  12,000  feet  high.  For  ages  the  Bernardino 
has  held  the  restless,  crawling  sands  of  the  thirsty  des 
ert  which  scorched  its  foothills,  and  at  last  the  cool 
waters  have  come  and  rippling  waves  play  with  its  foun 
dations.  Facing  Salton — or  what  was  once  Sal  ton — the 
sea  is  about  twelve  miles  wide,  and  the  mountains,  rising 
majestically  to  the  west,  mirror  themselves  on  its  placid 
surface. 

Here,  in  Yuma,  they  tell  me  the  temperature  was  no 
higher  than  usual  last  summer,  yet  the  heat  was  the  most 
oppressive  in  the  history  of  the  place.  They  attribute 
this  oppression  to  the  Salton  sea,  and  dread  the  ap 
proach  of  June  with  a  much  greater  area  under  water. 

Whatever  the  outcome  of  this  continuous  inundation 
may  be,  if  not  arrested,  whether  the  present  waters  join 
the  gulf  or  an  inland  sea  is  formed,  a  remarkable  climatic 
change  is  sure  to  occur,  and,  indeed,  is  now  in  process 
of  evolution.  For  the  past  year,  more  rain  has  fallen  in 
and  around  Yuma  than  in  the  last  five  years,  and  sections 
of  land  that  were  formerly  a  wilderness  of  shifting  sands 
are  now  Blossoming  like  a  garden.  Here  before  our  very 
eyes  is  the  verification  of  the  prophecy  of  Isaiah :  i  l  The 
land  that  was  desolate  and  impassable  shall  be  glad,  and 
tho  wilderness  shall  rejoice  and  shall  flourish  like  a  lily; 
it  shall  bud  forth  and  blossom  and  shall  rejoice  with  joy; 


BY  PATH  AND  TRAIL.  225 

the  glory  of  Libamis  is  given  to  it ;  the  beauty  of  Carmel 
and  Sharon. " 

The  vitality  of  desert  seeds  is  imperishable,  and,  like 
the  peace  of  the  Lord,  surpasseth  the  understanding  of 
man.  There  are  places  near  here,  now  bright  and  green 
with  flowers  and  grasses,  that  a  few  years  since  were 
wastes  of  land,  and  from  immemorial  time  scorched  with 
hopeless  sterility.  Since  "the  waters  have  broken  out 
in  the  desert  and  streams  in  the  wilderness,"  the  face 
of  this  region  is  taking  on  the  look  of  youth,  and  the 
land  a  competitive  value. 

At  Salton  the  water  is  as  translucent  as  the  sea  at 
Abalone,  and  is  even  more  salty.  It  seems  almost  un 
canny  to  cruise  about  in  skiffs  and  launches  over  places 
which,  a  while  ago,  were  barren  lands,  and  over  homes 
\  here  people  lived. 

At  the  present  time  two  great  forces  are  battling  for 
the  mastery  of  a  territory  as  large  as  the  state  of  Rhode 
Island.  On  the  one  side  is  the  Colorado  river  that  has 
never  been  controlled  by  man;  on  the  other  is  a  power 
ful  irrigation  company,  supported  by  the  genius  and  re 
source  of  a  great  railroad  corporation.  There  are  indi 
cations  that  they  may  retire  from  the  fight  and  run  for 
the  hills,  leaving  the  governments  of  the  United  States 
and  Mexico  to  engage  the  monster  that  threatens  the  an- 
nhi]ation  of  Imperial  valley  and  its  thousands  of  culti 
vated  acres  and  prosperous  homes. 

THE  END. 


